The hunt for the eight comes amid heightened concerns about terrorist attacks against American targets in the United States and abroad. The alert went out via Interpol, an international policing agency.

President Bush announced a list of 22 "most-wanted" terrorists. It included bin Laden and several people linked to the 19 hijackers who crashed planes into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon.

Concerns about biological attacks lingered as preliminary tests on the anthrax that killed a Florida man last week uncovered a possible match to a laboratory strain of anthrax first isolated in Iowa. Investigators regard the anthrax discovery in Florida as a criminal case. They have found no links to terrorists or the 19 hijackers.

Attorney General John Ashcroft picked federal prosecutors from New York, northern Virginia, home of the Pentagon, and the department's criminal and violent crimes sections for a task force that will build cases against terrorists and gather information to prevent further attacks.

In the past, prosecution of terrorism cases has fallen to individual U.S. attorney's offices. The Sept. 11 attacks case, however, will fall under Assistant Attorney General Michael Chertoff, head of the department's Criminal Division.

FBI investigators met Wednesday in Washington with German authorities. The attacks are believed to have been partly hatched in Germany, where at least three of the 19 suspected hijackers worked and studied.

The Defense Department said none of the suspected hijackers received training at U.S. military schools. Three hijackers have names similar to those who attended the schools, but a review of biographical data indicates they are not the same people, Army Lt. Col. Catherine Abbott said.

The search for the eight suspects in Europe highlighted concerns of a terrorist strike against American targets in retaliation for U.S. bombing in Afghanistan.

Spanish investigators have told The Associated Press that Essid Sami Ben Khemais, a Tunisian arrested in April, met earlier this year with Mohamed Atta, one of the hijackers who hit the World Trade Center, and with members of an Algerian group now in Spanish custody.

Ben Khemais, who police believe was sent from Afghanistan to supervise bin Laden's terrorist operations in Europe, and five others arrested in Italy and Germany in April have been linked to an attack planned for January against the U.S. Embassy in Rome.

In June, Spanish police arrested Mohammed Bensakhria, an Algerian described as one of bin Laden's key people in Europe, and extradited him to France.

National Police Chief Juan Cotino said Bensakhria and other bin Laden deputies traveled to Spain earlier this year where they apparently issued orders to members of a suspected Algerian terrorist cell to attack U.S. interests in Europe.

Atta, identified by the FBI as one of the hijackers who flew an American Airlines jet into the one of the World Trade Center towers, traveled to Spain in July, records show.

Last month, police arrested six Algerians in raids in different parts of the country and confiscated videos and instruction manuals for bomb attacks.

In other developments:

_Investigators awaited test results that will show whether the bacteria from a man who died in Florida is similar to a strain of anthrax isolated in Iowa in the 1940s.

_The U.S. Customs Service has discovered financial transactions between Nabil al-Marabh, a former Boston cabbie arrested in Chicago in connection with the terror attacks, and Raed Hijazi, a suspect in the failed plot to kill Americans in Jordan during the millennium celebration, a law enforcement official said.

_Lotfi Raissi, an Algerian pilot who prosecutors say was the lead flight instructor for some of the hijackers who crashed a plane into the Pentagon, was indicted in Arizona for providing false information on an FAA form. Raissi was arrested in London Sept. 21; U.S. authorities want to extradite him. His lawyer has denied Raissi was involved in the Sept. 11 attacks.

_A criminal complaint was dismissed against Farouk Ali-Haimoud. He was detained Sept. 17 by FBI agents searching a Detroit house for another man wanted for questioning in the terror attacks

_Hani Hanjoor, suspected of crashing a plane into the Pentagon, attended English classes and briefly attended flight school in the San Francisco Bay area in 1996, the FBI said.