UK Public Health Official Refutes Claims Children, Animals Harmed In 2018 Salisbury Attack

No children and wildlife were negatively affected by last year's Salisbury poisoning incident, Tracy Daszkiewicz, the director of public health at Wiltshire council, told The Guardian newspaper after claims in the media that US President Donald Trump decided to take action against Russia after being shown images of dead ducks and children in hospital

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 19th April, 2019) No children and wildlife were negatively affected by last year's Salisbury poisoning incident, Tracy Daszkiewicz, the director of public health at Wiltshire council, told The Guardian newspaper after claims in the media that US President Donald Trump decided to take action against Russia after being shown images of dead ducks and children in hospital.

The New York Times newspaper reported on Tuesday, citing multiple unnamed intelligence officers and ex-intelligence officers, that Trump initially had no plans to expel 60 Russian diplomats over the notorious case of poisoning former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia. However, Gina Haspel, then-deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and now the CIA head, reportedly persuaded Trump to do so by showing him photos of children and ducks, allegedly affected by the nerve agent used to poison the Skripals. Haspel reportedly received the photos from the UK government.

"There were no other casualties other than those previously stated. No wildlife were impacted by the incident and no children were exposed to or became ill as a result of either incident," Daszkiewicz said, asked to comment on The New York Times publication.

The Salisbury district hospital confirmed that no children had been hospitalized as a result of the last year's incident, The Guardian reported, adding that several children were taken to hospital by parents, who thought that their children could have been poisoned.

On March 4, 2018, the Skripals were found unconscious on a bench near a shopping center in Salisbury. London claimed they were poisoned with a military-grade nerve agent and accused Moscow of staging the attack.

The Kremlin has repeatedly dismissed the claims about Russia's involvement in the attack and stressed that Moscow has been denied access both to the investigation into the incident and to the Russian nationals.

Although both Sergei and Yulia Skripal are said to have recovered from the attack, Russian diplomats working in the United Kingdom say that no one has personally seen them since last March and the fate of the Russian nationals, therefore, remains unknown.