Following the start of the war against Iraq, the United States on Thursday closed at least 13 of its embassies and consulates around the world to the public for security reasons, a news agency quoted state department officials as saying.

The closures were not related to specific threats of terrorism, but were rather a precautionary move, they said.

US embassies in Almaty, Amman, Buenos Aires, Cairo, Caracas, Damascus, Kabul, Oslo, Pretoria, Nairobi, Riyadh, and Skopje were closed, the officials said.

The US consulate in Johannesburg was closed and the consulate in Durban was briefly evacuated after a bomb scare, the officials said.

The officials said the list was partial and that other missions might be closed in the coming days.