LONDON: Britain's counter-terror officers were today investigating how a couple fell critically ill from the same military-grade nerve agent that nearly killed a former Russian double agent and his daughter in March.
Dawn Sturgess, 44, and Charlie Rowley, 45, were taken ill on Saturday in the village of Amesbury, close to the city of Salisbury, where former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found slumped on a bench on March 4 in an incident that sparked a diplomatic crisis with Russia.
Scotland Yard's Neil Basu, the senior-most counter-terrorism officer, confirmed that expert scientists in chemical warfare at the UK's Porton Down laboratory had established that nerve agent Novichok had caused their collapse.
"Following the detailed analysis of these samples, we can confirm that the man and woman have been exposed to the nerve agent Novichok, which has been identified as the same nerve agent that contaminated both Yulia and Skripal," Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Basu said in a statement.
"The priority for the investigation team now, is to establish how these two people have come into contact with this nerve agent," the Indian-origin officer said.
There was nothing in the backgrounds of Sturgess or Rowley, both British nationals, that would suggest they would be a target for a deliberate attack they have no connections to the intelligence or security communities, Basu said.
Around 100 detectives from the UK's Counter Terrorism Policing Network are now working alongside officers from Wiltshire Police.
They have cordoned off a number of sites as a "precautionary measure" in the Amesbury and Salisbury areas that they believe the duo visited in the period before they fell ill.
UK Home Secretary Sajid Javid will chair a meeting of the government's emergency Cobra committee to discuss the latest chemical attack, which is being seen as linked to Skripals' attack in some way.
"The government's first priority is for the safety of the residents in the local area," Javid said.
Novichok, a resilient and resistant military-grade nerve agent developed by the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s, takes effect within minutes, blocking messages from the nerves to the muscles causing bodily functions to collapse.
Chemical weapons expert Richard Guthrie said it was possible that Novichok which poisoned the Skripals may have been disposed of "in a haphazard way".
England's chief medical officer Sally Davies said: "I want to reassure the public that the risk to the general public remains low."
"As before, my advice is to wash your clothes and wipe down any personal items, shoes and bags, with cleansing or baby wipes before disposing of them in the usual way.
"You do not need to seek advice from a health professional unless you are experiencing symptoms, as any individual who had been significantly exposed at the same time would by now have symptoms," Davies said.
On Saturday, paramedics were called twice to the property in Amesbury - in the morning, after Sturgess had collapsed, then later the same day, after Rowley had also fallen unwell.
"It was initially believed that the two patients fell ill after using possibly heroin or crack cocaine from a contaminated batch of drugs," Wiltshire Police said.
But it was later established as a chemical poisoning after lab tests.
The British investigation into the attack on the Skripals concluded that the poison was smeared on to the door of the victims' house not more than 24 hours before they collapsed in March.
The Skripals have since made considerable recovery and believed to be in an undisclosed location for their safety.