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‘Unknown substance’ hospitalises two in UK’s Salisbury
LONDON, July 4, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – British police said Wednesday that two
people are in a critical condition in a Salisbury hospital after being
exposed to an “unknown substance” not far from where former Russian spy
Sergei Skripal and his daughter were poisoned.
Police said they considered the situation a “major incident.”
The two patients “are both currently receiving treatment for suspected
exposure to an unknown substance at Salisbury District Hospital,” Wiltshire
police said.
“They are both in a critical condition”.
The two people, a man and a woman both in their 40s, were discovered
unconscious on Saturday June 30 at a house in the village of Amesbury, which
is around 12 kilometres (eight miles) from Salisbury.
Sergei and Yulia Skripal were found slumped on a bench in the city in
southwestern England where the former double agent lived in March, sparking a
bitter diplomatic crisis between Moscow and London, which says a Soviet-made
nerve agent dubbed novichok was used on the pair.
Wiltshire police said they initially suspected that the two people had
fallen ill after using “possibly 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, police said, 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,”
they said in a statement.
The hospital said it remained “open as usual” and advised people to attend
routine appointments unless contacted to do otherwise.
Wiltshire’s Police and Crime Commissioner Angus Macpherson said the police
had worked hard at “containing any risk that might be there”, the BBC
reported.
Macpherson said there was “no reason to think it’s connected” to the
Skripal case.
Skripal, 67, and his 33-year-old daughter Yulia, who was visiting from
Moscow, collapsed on March 4 in Salisbury. They were treated for an extended
period of time before being released from Salisbury hospital.
A police officer who came to their aid, Nick Bailey, was also treated in
hospital.
Russia has rejected British accusations of involvement in the Skripal
poisoning, which sparked a diplomatic crisis that saw Russia and the West
expelling dozens of diplomats in tit-for-tat moves.
BSS/AFP/MSY/1402 hrs