MOSCOW, November 26. /TASS/. Breaches of safety rules were documented in high-security laboratories at universities of Washington, Minnesota and Illinois, Chief of Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Protection Troops Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov said on Saturday ahead of the Ninth Review Conference of the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC).

"Research conducted in high-security laboratories (BSL-3 and BSL-4) at the universities of Washington, Minnesota, and Illinois resulted in internal laboratory infections and increased the risk of further spread of genetically modified viral fever pathogens, severe acute respiratory syndrome, highly pathogenic avian influenza, and other infections," Kirillov said.

The general said that it was the conclusion of the US journal The Intercept, which in early November, under the US Freedom of Information Act, analyzed the data from the National Institute of Health related to safety breaches in biolabs in the US. In the past 18 years, more than 5,500 pages of incident reports were examined.