Police on Friday raced to find the object that contaminated a British couple with the Soviet-made Novichok nerve agent in southwestern England where a former Russian spy was poisoned with the same toxin four months ago.
Dawn Sturgess, 44, and Charlie Rowley, 45, fell ill on Saturday in Amesbury, a small town near the city of Salisbury where Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia collapsed on March 4, spreading fear once again among locals.
Police said they had established that the couple, who remain in a critical condition in hospital, were exposed to the nerve agent after “handling a contaminated item.”
They also did not rule out the possibility of more people coming into contact with the poison, which they suspect may have been left over from the attempted murder on the Skripals, although police have yet to determine whether it was the same batch.
“It is rather scary,” local resident Geoffrey, 66, told AFP, as he walked by the canal.
“It is an agent, it is not a gun or a knife that you can find and dispose of. It is something different, it could be on that bench… it makes me worried.”
“It is terrible to think that it happened months ago, and now it starts all over again,” said 82-year-old Madeleine Webb.
“It is the second time already, why not a third time? It’s not funny.”
Source: AFP
