Two hospitalized near nerve agent poisoning site in UK

Two people have been hospitalized in a critical condition for exposure to an “unknown substance” in the same British city where former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter were poisoned with a nerve agent earlier this year, officials said Wednesday.

British police declared a “major incident” after the couple, a man and a woman in their 40s, were discovered unconscious at a house in a quiet, newly-built area in the village of Amesbury.

The village is near the prehistoric monument of Stonehenge and around 12 kilometers from Salisbury, where Sergei and Yulia Skripal were found slumped on a bench in March in an incident that sparked a bitter diplomatic crisis with Russia.

The two patients “are both currently receiving treatment for suspected exposure to an unknown substance at Salisbury District Hospital,” police said in a statement.

“They are both in a critical condition,” the statement said.

The hospital is the same one where the Skripals were treated.

The pair were discovered on Saturday and police said they initially suspected that they had fallen ill after using “heroin or crack cocaine from a contaminated batch of drugs.”

“However, further testing is now ongoing to establish the substance which led to these patients becoming ill and we are keeping an open mind as to the circumstances surrounding this incident,” they said.

Security cordons have been set up around the areas where the two people went before they fell ill and security has been boosted in both Amesbury and Salisbury.

A Public Health England (PHE) spokesman said “it is not believed that there is a significant health risk to the wider public.”

“This will be continually assessed as further information becomes known,” he said.

A Baptist church in Amesbury, which held a party that the two attended on Saturday, was one of the areas that was cordoned off. Church secretary Roy Collins said around 200 people had attended the event but “nobody else has suffered any ill effects.”