The UK government has accused Russia using ”barbaric and inhumane” chemical weapons on Britain’s streets as counterterrorism police investigate how a Wiltshire couple were poisoned with a Soviet-style chemical weapon.
Home secretary Savid Javid chaired an emergency Cobra meeting after Dawn Sturgess and Charlie Rowley fell critically ill in Amesbury after exposure to the same novichok toxin used in an assassination attempt on Russian ex-spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in nearby Salisbury in March.
The couple are fighting for life in hospital after falling ill on Saturday.
Mr Javid told MPs that results from the government’s Porton Down laboratory confirmed the pair had been poisoned with ”the exact same nerve agent” used in March’s assassination attempt, which the British government alleges was planned by the Kremlin.
Mr Rowley, 45, and Ms Sturgess, 44, are not thought to have been deliberately targeted and have no known links to the Skripals or espionage.
One theory understood to be under investigation is that the pair may have inadvertently found a container used to transport the nerve agent for the initial attack and which may have been discarded in a public place.
Their poisoning has raised serious questions about the multi-million-pound clean-up following the attack in Salisbury, about eight miles from Amesbury.
Police have said there is no evidence that either of the latest victims had recently visited any of the sites that were part of the original clean-up.
Securities minister Ben Wallace has said the public are at “low risk” but “not zero risk”.
Live Updates
Philip Ingram, who was in the military for more than 26 years, said: "They could have easily thrown whatever it was they used to contaminate the Skripals' front door.
"They could have thrown it under a hedge, they could have thrown it into a school playground, they could've put it under the seat in a local train and could've caused greater casualties elsewhere.
"By not focusing on that they have put the public at risk."
Police put the public at danger if the latest poisonings came from the container holding the Novichok used in the Salisbury attack, a former senior British military intelligence officer has said.
Asked if the public is safe from finding more of the nerve agent, Alistair Cunningham, Wiltshire Council's corporate director, said: "The investigative work will be what leads us to those sites that we seek to decontaminate.
"It has always been said the risk is low."
Alistair Cunningham, corporate director of Wiltshire Council, has acknowledged authorities will not be able to conclusively establish there is no further remnants of novichok in Salisbury.
But he said the fact only two patients had fallen ill suggested the incident was "contained".
Alistair Cunningham, corporate director of Wiltshire Council, has denied that there was "failure" in the clean-up operation following the poisoning of the Skripals.
Responding to a question from a journalist, he said the incident was "unprecedented".
"The sites that have been clean are clean and remain clean," he added
A number of other people have turned up Salisbury District Hospital with concerns they may have been exposed to the novichok which poisoned Sturgess and Rowley but none required treatment following assessment by medics.
Dawn Sturgess and Charlie Rowley remain "acutely unwell", says Salisbury District Hospital’s chief executive Cara Charles-Barks says.
She says the hospital's staff are better placed to treat the couple due to their experience of treating Sergei and Yulia Skripal for exposure to the same nerve agent.
Protective barriers will be erected in place of cordons in areas of Amesbury and Salisbury that have been closed off by police.
Pritchard said the public should not "be alarmed".
Pritchard said defended the initial decisions made by his police officers, who at first believed Dawn Sturgess and Charlie Rowley had fallen ill on Saturday after taking a contaminated batch of drugs.
Medics later raised concerns that the couple's symptoms pointed towards exposure to a nerve agent.
The couple both remain critically ill, Pritchard says.
The Amesbury poisoning may strengthen the resolve of UK allies who were wavering over sanctions on Russia, experts have suggested.
The latest incident comes ahead of a Nato summit next week in Brussels, where the threat from Russia will be high on the agenda, swiftly followed by Donald Trump's visit to the UK and the US president's face-to-face talks with Vladimir Putin.
Mr Trump's decision to meet the Russian president alone without aides in Helsinki, coupled with his history of disparaging remarks about Nato, has fuelled concerns in European capitals that the White House may be seeking to recast relations with Moscow.
Mr Putin is currently riding high on the widely-acclaimed football World Cup, and experts believe he is seeking to use the sporting spectacle to open up fissures in the international coalition which confronted him after Salisbury.
Following the Salisbury attack, Britain led dozens of countries worldwide - including the US, Germany and France - in expelling more than 150 Russian embassy officials believed to have been involved in spying.
But several Western states have since indicated a willingness to rebuild ties, with France's Emmanuel Macron travelling to St Petersburg to call on Russia to work "hand-in-hand" with Europe, Italy questioning whether sanctions imposed over the 2014 annexation of Crimea should continue, and now the Trump-Putin summit on July 16.
The head of the Russia and Eurasia programme at international affairs think tank Chatham House, James Nixey, told the Press Association: "Memories are short. What was an outrage in early March is now a distant memory to many.
"Russia is making a good fist of the World Cup, and I suspect there will be voices after it is over saying 'Look, Russia is a normal country now, see how well it has organised everything. We should treat it as a normal country and lift sanctions'.
"If suddenly the danger posed by a chemical attack is brought back into the public consciousness in this way, spines will stiffen when they might have been wavering.
"It will remind people who might need reminding that the Salisbury outrage is just as much of an outrage now as it was in March."
Conservative MP Bob Seely, who has written academic studies of Russian warfare, said it was vital Nato remained "coherent and robust" in its stance towards Moscow.
"I am sure that the Prime Minister will be arguing this with President Trump," the Isle of Wight MP said. "Let's hope that he is listening.
"I worry Trump has his own agenda regarding Putin which is unhelpful to the UK and Nato. His rhetoric is getting worse, not better.
"For whatever reason, he seems to want his one-on-one negotiations with Putin to remain private. Last time he met Trump, I understand he only used a single, Russian, translator. This is concerning."
We are expecting an update from authorities on the Amesbury novichok poisoning in just over half an hour.
Senior figures from Wiltshire Police, Salisbury District Hospital, Public Health England and Wiltshire Council will all deliver statements at a multi-agency press conference at 4.30pm.
Residents at the homeless hostel in Salisbury where one of the new novichok victims lives have been evacuated.
Uniformed police officers are guarding John Baker House, where Dawn Sturgess had been staying, and investigators have been seen entering the building today.
This afternoon police widened a cordon around the support living building in Rollestone Street and workmen put up "incident screens" to obscure vision into the entrance.
A bin outside the hostel has been cordoned off and covered with a plastic sheet.
About 10 residents gathered outside said they were told by staff they had to be moved and rehoused elsewhere in the Wiltshire city.
Ben Jordan, 27, said: "We are being told we're being evacuated. Yesterday [police] were taking statements off of everybody."
Residents said officers, not in hazardous material clothing, had been guarding the door to Ms Sturgess's upstairs room but were unsure if they had been inside.
Sanctuary Housing, which runs John Baker House, redirected questions to the Metropolitan Police, which refused to comment.
Ms Sturgess was named locally as the 44-year-old woman taken to hospital on Saturday morning from her partner Charlie Rowley's flat in Muggleton Road, Amesbury.
Mr Rowley, 45, fell ill later that day.
England fans in Russia have said they have no concerns that the Amesbury poisoning could cause possible tensions with locals.
Supporters in the country for the World Cup woke up to the news that a Soviet-style novichok nerve agent had left Charlie Rowley and Dawn Sturgess critically ill in Wiltshire.
The Foreign Office had already warned fans before the football tournament of possible "anti-British sentiment" following the Sergei's Skripal poisoning and there resulting diplomatic row, and the latest incident threatens to plunge Britain's relations with the Kremlin further into the deep freeze.
But Kevin and Fiona Jones, who arrived in Samara on Thursday ahead of England's quarter final with Sweden, said they had enjoyed friendly interactions with locals.
Asked if he was concerned about potential tensions, Mr Jones, 54, from Tunbridge Wells, said. "No, no. I really don't see it. It's another poisoning, who knows what happened on the first one, let alone the second one?
"If they get knocked out it might change. But at the moment they are all on a high and buzzing with the fact their football team is doing so well.
"I don't think anyone gives a monkey's about anything other than football at the moment."
Mark Heys, 56, from Bridgnorth, Shropshire, agreed the deepening political tensions between the UK government and the Kremlin had not been an issue.
"None of the Russians I've met have any interest whatsoever in politics so they don't care," he said.
"We went to an FA briefing before we came out and they said, 'You won't have any trouble out here. From a political point of view, nobody cares'.
"It is exactly how they said it would be."
His friend Bob Green, 53, from Stamford, Lincolnshire, said he had "no concern at all".
He said: "At the Volgograd game they found it very funny they couldn't kill mosquitoes on the pitch and they were supposed to have killed people all around the world. That was like a national joke."
Former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter were 'under Russian surveillance' months before Salisbury poisoning
Phone belonging to double agent's daughter reportedly searched for malware which could have tracked her movementsPlease allow a moment for the live blog to load.
