2 critical after exposure near spy poisoning site in UK
AMESBURY, England: British counterterrorism police were investigating yesterday after two people were left in critical condition, exposed to an unknown substance a few kilometres from where a former Russian spy and his daughter were poisoned with a nerve agent.
The Wiltshire Police force declared a “major incident” after a man and a woman in their 40s were hospitalised.
They were found unconscious on Saturday at a residential building in Amesbury, 13km from Salisbury, where Sergei and Yulia Skripal were poisoned on March 4.
London’s Metropolitan Police force said “given the recent events in Salisbury”, counterterrorism officers were investigating. British media reported that samples of the mystery substance had been sent to the Portdon Down defence research laboratory for testing.
Police cordoned off a home and other places the two people visited before falling ill, including a nearby church and a pharmacy, but health officials said there was not believed to be a wider risk to the public.
A “major incident” allows British authorities to mobilise more than one emergency agency.
This echoes the response in the case of the Skripals, whose illness initially baffled doctors after they were found unconscious on a park bench in Salisbury. Scientists at Porton Down concluded they had been poisoned with Novichok, a type of nerve agent developed by the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
Britain accuses Russia of poisoning the Skripals, a claim Moscow strongly denies. The poisoning sparked a Cold War-style diplomatic crisis between Russia and the West, including the expulsion of hundreds of diplomats from both sides.
The two Amesbury victims were being treated at Salisbury District Hospital, where the Skripals spent weeks in critical condition. Authorities initially believed the latest victims might have taken a contaminated batch of heroin or crack cocaine. “However, further testing is now ongoing to establish the substance which led to these patients becoming ill,” police said. Sergei Skripal, 67, is a former Russian intelligence officer who was convicted of spying for Britain before coming to the UK in a 2010 prisoner swop.
Among the sites cordoned off was a Baptist church where the victims attended a community event on Saturday. Some 200 people were at the neighbourhood event, but nobody else suffered any ill-effects.