Unknown substance leaves two people critically ill near Salisbury, British police say

LONDON (Reuters) – British police said on Wednesday they were suspected to be a victim of an unknown substance.

Police in Wiltshire, where former double-agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were poisoned with a nerve agent in March, took the rare step of declaring a major incident after a man and woman were found unconscious on Saturday in Amesbury.

The pair are now in hospital in a critical condition.

"They are both currently receiving treatment for an unknown substance," Wiltshire Police said in a statement. "

The pair, both in their 40s, were believed to have taken heroin or crack cocaine from a contaminated batch of drugs. They are being treated at Salisbury District Hospital, which remains open as usual, police said.

The Skripals in a critical condition in the hospital and slowly being discharged.

More than three days since the two people were found, tests are made to ascertain what substance made them ill.

Amesbury lies seven miles (11 km) to the north of Salisbury, where the Skripals were found slumped unconscious on March 4.

Police said sites in both Amesbury and Salisbury that they believed the man and woman found in Amesbury had had to be cordoned off as a precaution.

A Public Health England (PHE) spokesman said there was a significant risk to the public.

Britain blamed Russia for poisoning Skripal with Novichok nerve agent, the first known offensive of such a nerve agent on European soil since World War Two.

Moscow denied any involvement and suggested Britain had been attacked to stoke anti-Russian hysteria.

Russia has said it does not have such nerve agents, did not develop Novichok, and President Vladimir Putin dismissed as nonsense the notion that Moscow would have poisoned Skripal and his 33-year-old daughter.

The attack prompted the biggest Western expulsion of Russian diplomats since the Cold War has allied in Europe and the United States with the Prime Minister Theresa May's view that Moscow was either responsible or had lost control of the nerve agent.

Moscow diplomats, questioning how Britain knows what Russia is responsible for and offers its rival interpretations, including that it amounts to a plot by British secret services.