Nerve agent was used on Russian ex-spy, daughter, British police say

A Russian ex-spy LONDON — 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 fur t her 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 radio- active poison was used. The choice of a nerve agent in the latest case follows 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 counter- terrorism 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 peo- ple who became unwell were targeted specifically,” Metropolitan Police counterterror- ism chief Mark Rowley said.

Police said the two “remain in a critical condition in inten- sive 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 spy- ing 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 vomit- ing, breathlessness, paralysis and often death. Officials have not offered a prognosis for Skripal and his daughter.

Sally Davies, chief medical officer for England, said there was a low risk to the public.

Police and forensics offi- cers 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 9 miles away, near the ancient stone monument of Stone- henge. 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 center 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 clear if the incident had anything to do with the ongoing investigation.

Moscow officials, angered by allegations of Russian state involvement, accused Britain of using the case to fuel an “anti-Russian campaign” and further damage ties with Britain.

“What happened to Skripal has been immediately used to further incite an anti-Russian campaign in Western media,” said Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova.