UK Emergency Committee to Meet on Thursday Over Amesbury Incident

UK Home Secretary Sajid Javid said he would chair a special government meeting Thursday to discuss the probe into a nerve agent poisoning in the town of Amesbury, which left two people critically ill.

"Tomorrow (Thursday) I will chair a meeting of the Government's emergency committee COBR in relation to the ongoing investigation," he said in a statement on Wednesday.

Two persons who came down Saturday with symptoms of poisoning in the British town of Amesbury were found to have been exposed to the same toxin as the ex-Russian intelligence officer Sergei Skrial and his daughter in Salisbury, the head of UK Metropolitan Police’s anti-terrorism unit said earlier on Wednesday.

The newest victims — a 45-year-old man and a 44-year-old woman — are critically ill in hospital. They were discovered unconscious at the same address in Wiltshire county in South West England, miles from where the Skripals were found collapsed in the park.

Chief Medical Officer Sally Davies told reporters on Wednesday that the risk to public health following hospitalization of two Britons in the town of Amesbury with symptoms of exposure to a Salisbury nerve agent remains low.

"I want to reiterate the police are still investigating how this incident happened. We want to reassure the public that risk to the public remains low," Chief Medical Officer Sally Davies told reporters on Wednesday.

Metropolitan Police anti-terrorism chief Neil Basu said earlier in the day police had cordoned off as a precaution a number of sites in the Amesbury and Salisbury areas that they believed the two victims had visited before they fell ill on Saturday.

Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found unconscious on a bench near a shopping mall in Salisbury on March 4. UK authorities blamed Russia for a murder attempt with what they believe to be a nerve agent of the Novichok class. Russia has denied any role in the poisoning.