St. Petersburg antiterrorism drills ahead of July G8 summit

ST. PETERSBURG, June 21 (RIA Novosti) - St. Petersburg will hold exercises Wednesday on counteracting terrorist attacks involving biological and chemical weapons in the run-up to a summit of the Group of Eight most developed nations in July.

The exercises, which will be conducted by the emergencies and interior ministries, will be staged in the Gulf of Finland and the seaport buildings, where law enforcers will practice dealing with poisonous substances being sprayed into air, the aftermath of a powerful explosion, extinguishing fires and recovering the injured people from under rubble.

They will also have to practice putting out fire on a tanker carrying chemical substances and containing a spill after an onboard explosion.

Aerial reconnaissance, airlifting rescuers and the injured, are among other events on the program of the exercises.

The leaders of the eight industrialized nations, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United States, and Russia, the G8 president in 2006, will gather in the city July 15-17.

G8 summits and some other international forums are traditionally a focus of anti-globalization protests and are therefore heavily guarded by police. Protests sometimes end in clashes, the most violent of which occurred during the G8 summit in Genoa, Italy, in July 2001, when a young protester was killed.