Russian ex spy was attacked with nerve agent
A Russian ex- spy and his daughter fighting for their lives in an English hospital were attacked with a nerve agent in a targeted murder attempt, British police said Wednesday.
The case has further strained relations between Russia and Britain, which has said it will respond strongly if the Russian government is linked to the attack. It has overtones of a 2006 fatal attack on a former Russian spy that was blamed on the Kremlin.
In that incident, a radioactive poison was used. The choice of a nerve agent in the latest case follows the use of the banned nerve agent VX to kill the estranged half-brother of North Korea’s leader last year.
Sergei Skripal, 66, and his 33-year-old daughter Yulia were found unconscious on a bench in the southwestern English city of Salisbury on Sunday, triggering a police investigation led by counterterrorism detectives. Baffled police initially said the pair had come into contact with an unknown substance. “Having established that a nerve agent is the cause of the symptoms leading us to treat this as attempted murder, I can also confirm that we believe that the two people who became unwell were targeted specifically,’’ Metropolitan Police counterterrorism chief Mark Rowley said.
Police said the two “remain in a critical condition in intensive care after being exposed to the substance.’’
Police have declined to speculate on who might be behind the attack. The Russian government has denied any involvement in the attack on Skripal, a former
Russian agent who had served jail time in his homeland for spying for Britain before being freed in a spy swap.
Rowley said a police officer who treated Skripal and his daughter at the scene was in serious condition. He did not provide the officer’s name or specifics about his condition. Rowley didn’t say what nerve agent was suspected in the attack. Nerve agents are chemicals that disrupt the messages sent by from the nerves to the body’s organs. They can be administered in gas or liquid form, causing symptoms including vomiting, breathlessness, paralysis and often death. Officials
have not offered a prognosis for Skripal and his daughter.
Sally Davies, the chief medical officer for England, said there was a low risk to the public.
Police and forensics officers continued to scour several sites in and around Salisbury on Wednesday. Police kept residents away from an Italian restaurant and a pub in the city, and cordoned off part of a business park about nine miles (14 kilometres) away, near the ancient stone monument of Stonehenge. Detectives appealed for information from anyone who visited either the Zizzi restaurant or the Bishop’s
Mill pub in Salisbury on Sunday. Residents saw their usually placid town, famed for its 13th-century Gothic cathedral, turned into the centre of a criminal probe with Cold War echoes.
With nerves still on edge, ambulances and emergency vehicles rushed to a building beside the Zizzi restaurant, which remains cordoned off. Witness Toni Walker said emergency services escorted two women from the building. Police and ambulance services declined to comment and it wasn’t immediately clear if the incident had anything to do with the ongoing investigation.