UK holds emergency meeting on new nerve agent case

Britain is holding an emergency cabinet meeting on today over a couple who were left critically ill after being exposed to the same nerve agent used on a former Russian spy earlier this year.

Home Secretary Sajid Javid will be chairing the talks in London, as counter-terrorism police lead an investigation into the incident in Amesbury, a village in southwest England.

The village is 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.

"The possibility that these two investigations might be linked is clearly a line of enquiry for us," said Neil Basu, head of Britain's counter-terrorism police force.

Police on Wednesday said that tests at Britain's Porton Down defence laboratory had confirmed that the substance was Novichok, which Britain says is a Soviet-made military grade nerve agent.

"The priority for the investigation team now is to establish how these two people have come into contact with this nerve agent," Basu said.

"We have no idea what may have contained the nerve agent at this time," he said, urging members of the public not to pick anything up if they did not know what it was.

The police chief said it was the same nerve agent used against the Skripals but "whether we can ever tell if it's the same batch will be up to scientists to determine".

Basu said there was no evidence to suggest that the man and the woman, named locally as Charlie Rowley and Dawn Sturgess, "were targeted in any way".

Basu said there was no evidence the man and the woman had "recently visited any of the sites that were decontaminated" after the poisoning of the Skripals.

"This remains a low risk to the general public," he said.

"We're satisfied that if anyone was exposed to that level of nerve agent by now they would be showing symptoms." The 44-year-old woman collapsed first and an ambulance was called at around 0915 GMT, while the 45-year-old man fell ill later and an ambulance was called at 1430 GMT to the same house in Amesbury.

Police had initially assumed that the two had consumed contaminated drugs. But samples from both patients were sent to Porton Down on Monday "due to concern over the symptoms the man and woman were displaying," Basu said.

Both are still in a critical condition and are at Salisbury District Hospital -- the same facility where the Skripals were treated.

Local man Sam Hobson, 29, told AFP he was a friend of the pair and said he saw the man fall ill.

"He was sweating loads, dribbling, and you couldn't speak to him, he was making funny noises and he was rocking backwards and forwards," Hobson said.

"It's like he was in another world."