SALISBURY, United Kingdom: 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.”
London blames Russia for the Skripal attack, with interior minister Sajid Javid on Thursday accusing Moscow of using Britain as a “dumping ground for poison.”
Russia has strongly denied the accusation.
“It is completely unacceptable for our people to be either deliberate or accidental targets, or for our streets, our parks, our towns to be dumping grounds for poison,” Javid told parliament.
But Russia quickly hit back, denouncing Britain for playing “dirty political games,” trying to “muddy the waters” and “frighten its own citizens.”
“We urge British law enforcement not to get involved in dirty political games,” foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told reporters.
“This government and its representatives will have to apologize to Russia and the international community,” she said.
The Skripal incident triggered a major diplomatic crisis, leading to Britain and its allies withdrawing diplomatic staff from Moscow and tit-for-tat expulsions by Russia.
Novichok is a military-grade nerve agent developed by the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
A government scientist told the BBC on Thursday that the agent can be degraded by water and sunlight, meaning it was unlikely the contamination took place in the open, and said that it was so toxic that it could pass through the skin.
Police declared a major incident on Wednesday after Sturgess and then Rowley collapsed on Saturday.
They initially suspected that the couple had consumed a contaminated batch of illegal drugs, saying they had found “paraphernalia” in the house, but tests at nearby defense laboratory Porton Down revealed they had been exposed to Novichok.
A friend of Rowley’s told AFP that he was a drug user and Sturgess lived in a homeless hostel in Salisbury.
Around 100 counter-terror detectives are now working alongside police on the investigation.
Several sites in the city and nearby Amesbury that were visited by the couple have been cordoned off, including a park, a pharmacy, a church and a supermarket.
A fleet of fire trucks and emergency vehicles on Friday arrived at the house in Amesbury where the couple fell ill, with crew wearing gas masks and breathing equipment seen going in and out of the property.
A tent was erected outside the house, as-well as at least five outside the John Baker House homeless shelter in Salisbury, where Sturgess sometimes stayed.
Officials said there was only a “low risk” to the wider public, but urged anyone who had visited the affected sites to wash their clothes and wipe down personal items.
Police said there was no evidence the latest victims had visited any of the sites linked to the Skripals, which have since been decontaminated.
Sam Hobson, a friend of the couple, said he had visited Salisbury with them the day before they fell ill.
Hobson said he went to Rowley’s house on Saturday as Sturgess was being taken to hospital and stayed with him for several hours until he too began to complain of feeling ill.
“He was sweating loads, dribbling, and you couldn’t speak to him,” Hobson said.
“It’s like he was in another world, hallucinating.”
UK police hunt object that poisoned couple with nerve agent
UK police hunt object that poisoned couple with nerve agent
- British police scour sections of Salisbury and Amesbury, searching for a small vial feared to be contaminated with a deadly nerve agent
- More than 100 officers look for clues to understand how two local people were exposed to Novichok
US intel did not suggest a preemptive strike from Iran before US-Israeli attacks, AP sources say
- The official said a variety of factors created a golden opportunity to take out much of Iran’s leadership
WASHINGTON: Trump administration officials told congressional staff in private briefings Sunday that US intelligence did not suggest Iran was preparing to launch a preemptive strike against the US, three people familiar with the briefings said.
The administration officials instead acknowledged there was a more general threat in the region from Iran’s missiles and proxy forces, two of the people said. The third person, however, said the administration emphasized that Iran’s missiles and proxy forces posed an imminent threat to US personnel and allies in the region.
The officials did not provide any clarity about what would happen next in Iran after the joint US-Israeli operation, the two people said. All three people insisted on anonymity to discuss details that have not been made public.
The information conveyed to the congressional staff contrasts with the message from President Donald Trump. “Our objective is to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime. A vicious group of very hard, terrible people,” he said in a video message after launching strikes on Iran.
Senior Trump administration officials, who like others were not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity, had told reporters Saturday that there were indicators that the Iranians could launch a preemptive attack.
The White House and Pentagon did not immediately reply to requests for comment on Sunday night. Details of the briefing were first reported by Politico.
On Tuesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will brief the full membership of Congress on the US military operation against Iran, the White House said Sunday. Rubio also was slated to brief Hill leadership Monday, the same day Hegseth and Caine are planning a press conference about the operation.
Three strikes, three locations, within a single minute
The military operation came after authorities from Israel and the US spent weeks tracking the movements of senior Iranian leaders, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and shared information that allowed the strikes to be carried out in a surprise daylight attack, according to an Israeli military official and another person familiar with the operation.
The eventual barrage of US-Israeli attacks on Iran came so quickly that they were nearly simultaneous — with three strikes in three locations hitting within a single minute — killing Khamenei and some 40 senior figures, including the head of the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard and the country’s defense minister, the Israeli military official said Sunday.
The official said a variety of factors created a golden opportunity to take out much of Iran’s leadership, like weeks of training and monitoring the movements of senior figures as well as intelligence in real-time before the attack began that key targets were gathered together.
Striking by day also gave an additional element of surprise, said the official, who said so many major, rapid-fire strikes were critical to keep key officials from fleeing after the first strike. The official said Israel closely cooperated with its US counterparts and had used a similar tactic at the beginning of last June’s war — which resulted in the killing of several senior Iranian figures.
The official also noted Khamenei having posted defiant tweets taunting President Donald Trump in the days before the attack.
The details about the strikes came as the conflict entered its second day, with Trump saying in a video message Sunday that he expected it would continue until “all of our objectives are achieved.” He did not spell out what those objectives were.
The Republican president also said the US military and its partners hit hundreds of targets in Iran, including Revolutionary Guard facilities, Iranian air defense systems and nine warships, “all in a matter of literally minutes.”
CIA had long tracked top Iranian leaders
Before the attacks, the CIA had for months tracked the movements of senior Iranian leaders, including Khamenei.
The intelligence was shared with Israeli officials, and the timing of the strikes was adjusted in part because of that information about the Iranian leaders’ location, according to the person familiar with the planning.
The intelligence-sharing between US and Israel reflects the preparation that went into the strikes, which threw the future of the Islamic Republic into uncertainty and raised the risk of escalating regional conflict.
The US regularly shares intelligence with allies including Israel. Those partnerships, and the accuracy of the intelligence they yield, is often critical not only to the success of a military operation but also to the public’s support for it.
Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the senior Democrat on the committee, told The Associated Press that, historically, “our working relationship with the Mossad and Israel is really strong.” Mossad is the Israeli spy agency.
Warner said he has serious concerns about the justification for the strikes, Trump’s long-term plans for the conflict and the risks that US service members will face. The military announced Sunday that three American troops had been killed in the Iran operation.
“No tears will be shed over their leadership being eliminated, but always the question is: OK, what next?” Warner said.
Iran has signaled it’s open to talks with the US
A senior White House official said Iran’s “new potential leadership” has suggested it is open to talks with the United States. That official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal administration deliberations, said Trump has indicated he’s “eventually” willing to talk but that for now the military operation “continues unabated.”
The official did not say who the potential new Iranian leaders are or how they made their alleged willingness to talk known. Separately, Trump told The Atlantic that he planned to speak with Iran’s new leadership.
“They want to talk, and I have agreed to talk, so I will be talking to them,” he said Sunday, declining comment on the timing.
