The attack has significantly raised tensions between the West and Russia, which has denied any involvement. Days after Britain and its allies announced that they would expel more than 150 Russians, the Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, said that Moscow would respond in kind: It expelled 60 diplomats from the United States and shut the American consulate in St. Petersburg.
Russia has already expelled 23 Britons. The Americans were given until April 5 to leave.
The announcements came a day after the British authorities said that Ms. Skripal and her father, a former colonel for Russian military intelligence who was widely believed to have been a double agent, had been poisoned after the nerve agent was applied to the front door of their house, resolving one of the many mysteries in the case.
The BBC reported on Thursday that Ms. Skripal was “conscious and talking,” and that Mr. Skripal had apparently touched the nerve agent with his right hand, while his daughter did so with her left hand.
The Metropolitan Police also said on Thursday that the search for the source of the poisoning of the Skripals was now focused on the area around their home in the cathedral city of Salisbury, about 85 miles southwest of London.
To that end, the police placed a cordon around a children’s play area at a park near Mr. Skripal’s home, although they sought to allay fears that members of the public were at risk of being poisoned by describing the move as a precautionary measure.
“I would like to reiterate Public Health England’s advice that the risk to the public is low,” Deputy Assistant Commissioner Dean Haydon said in a statement.
Previously, the authorities had advised members of the public who had been near the Skripals on March 4, the day they collapsed unconscious on a bench in Salisbury, to wash their clothes, put unwashable items into sealed plastic bags, wash their eyeglasses in warm water and clean their phones with baby wipes.
The advisory applied to people who had visited two locations where Mr. Skripal and his daughter had spent time that day: an Italian restaurant and a pub. As many as 500 customers could be affected, the authorities said.
Source : Nytimes
