A TERRORIST attack on Newcastle city centre yesterday left 14 dead and 29 people injured. Emergency services were called after deadly Sarin gas was pumped into the city council's ventilation system as 200 people attended a packed public meeting.

Members of the audience collapsed and were left gasping for air after the nerve agent attack in the banqueting hall.

But don't panic, it was not for real.

Despite the realistic scenes of police officers and medics in gas masks and decontamination suits, emergency service staff were only acting in a staged event.

Newcastle yesterday hosted an emergency planning exercise to see how services could cope in the event of a terrorist attack.

With 200 "casualties", it was the biggest field exercise of its kind outside of London.

Police, fire and health officers came together at the Civic Centre to take part in the initiative, run by the Health Protection Agency.

Participants were briefed that a conference had been infiltrated by terrorists, who had put a nerve agent into the ventilation system.

Emergency services were quick to respond. The panic-stricken audience, choking on the deadly gas, burst from the back doors of the hall, many screaming in pain and collapsing on the ground outside.

Northumbria Police officers on the scene tried to contain the crowd, who risked contaminating the rest of the city.

When crews wearing protective clothing arrived, members of the public were forced to strip and shower in decontamination tents to rid of them of gas particles.

Their clothes were bagged to help contain the gas.

Amid the harrowing scenes, experts were trying to quickly identify the gas and assess which areas of the city would be affected by the airborne agent.

On the other side of town, Newcastle General Hospital tended to the sick and dying, with medics treating volunteers as well as attending to genuine cases at the hospital's busy A&E department.

It may seem a far-fetched scenario, but public health officials at every town and city in the UK need to be prepared.

Viv Hollioake, director of the Health Protection Agency in the North-East, said: "Newcastle is not under any threat whatsoever, but we cannot bury our heads in the sands about these things.

"It is important that it is not just London that test these inter-agency exercises. Who knows in this day and age what can happen. We all need to be prepared."

The £200,000 event took more than a year to plan and is part of a £2.6m programme of exercises taking place across the UK.

About 700 people from Tyne and Wear emergency services took part in the operation, which was based on the 1995 attack on Tokyo's underground system, which left 12 people dead and 1,000 injured. Nigel Lightfoot, of the Health Protection Agency, said: "In that situation, a polythene bag containing Sarin was pierced with an umbrella. There was an enormous panic, and we want to learn from problems that Tokyo saw."

Yesterday's event was attended by Health Minister John Hutton and members of the High Committee of Civil Defence in Paris, as well as delegates from the European Union.

Mr Hutton said: "It is very important that these plans are tested in a realistic environment. The public wants to be reassured and it is our job to reassure them."