The largest anti-terror drill ever undertaken in the United States started yesterday morning in Hillside, New Jersey with police officers investigating a fake car accident on a college campus and health officials on the lookout for a mock biological attack.

　　Reporters, briefed by officials as though a real attack were happening, were told that a phone tip led officers to a motor vehicle accident where car registrations did not match the vehicles. Meanwhile, doctors were expected to try to connect the incident to a fake patient who had been admitted to a hospital on Sunday night with "flu-like symptoms."

　　The US$16 million, weeklong drill is named "TOPOFF 3" for top state and national officials. In addition to the New Jersey attack, it is to include a fake chemical weapons attack in New London, Connecticut.

　　All told, more than 10,000 people will participate, including in exercises that will involve officials in Canada and England as well as the United States.

　　The drills are being monitored by top US Homeland Security officials from a command center in Washington, as well as regional centers in New Jersey and Connecticut.

　　The exact biological agent to be used in the fake attack was not announced; investigators at Kean University were expected to identify the substances after getting to the scene, just as they would have to do in real life.

　　Today and tomorrow, the drill will shift to local hospitals, where hundreds if not thousands of mock "patients" will show up in various degrees of medical crisis.

　　(The Associated Press)