UK woman exposed to nerve agent dies
salisbury — British police rushed to solve a murder mystery on Monday after a woman died following exposure to the nerve agent Novichok, four months after the same toxin nearly killed a former Russian spy in an attack that Britain blamed on Moscow.
Prime Minister Theresa May said she was “appalled and shocked” by the death of Dawn Sturgess, a 44-year-old mother of three who had been living in a homeless hostel in Salisbury in southwest England.
Dawn Sturgess and Charlie Rowley, 45, fell ill last weekend in the town of Amesbury, near Salisbury, the city where former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were attacked with Novichok in March. They have since recovered.
The British government has called a meeting of its COBRA emergencies committee for 1pm.
The Kremlin said it would be “absurd” to suggest Russia was involved in the death of Sturgess.
“We don’t know that Russia has been mentioned or associated with this,” President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
“We consider that in any case it would be quite absurd.”
Russia is “deeply concerned by the continuing appearance of these poisonous substances on British territory,” which “present a danger not just for the British but for all Europeans,” Peskov added.
Britain and its allies accused Russia of trying to kill the Skripals, prompting angry denials and spark- ing an international diplomatic crisis. Police said they could not yet say whether the nerve agent in the Amesbury case was linked to the Salisbury attack — but it was their main line of inquiry.
The head of Britain’s counterterror police also said he could not rule out further contaminations.
“I simply cannot offer any guarantees,” said Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu, who is leading the investigation.
He said people in Salisbury should not pick up strange items such as needles, syringes or unusual containers.
Whilst 21 other people have come forward with health concerns, they have been screened and “all been given the all-clear”, he said. Police and public health officials insist the risk to the wider public remains low. Police said that given the deadly dose, the British couple were believed to have become exposed to Novichok by handling a “contaminated item”, with speculation that it could have been the container used to administer the nerve agent to the Skripals.
Christine Blanshard, medical director at Salisbury District Hospital, told The Daily Telegraph newspaper that staff had “worked tirelessly to save Dawn”. —