Skripal was 'chanting unintelligibly' after being poisoned, inquiry told

A senior army nurse who came to the aid of the former Russian spy Sergei Skripal after he was poisoned with a nerve agent yesterday described how he was "chanting" unintelligibly.

- Steven Morris

Skripal was half-raising his hand and vomiting while his daughter Yulia's hand was clamped in a "claw" - at one point she stopped breathing.

Alison McCourt, who was then the British army's chief nursing officer, told the inquiry into the Wiltshire poisonings how she and other passersby gave the pair first aid as they waited for the emergency services.

McCourt said the Russian embassy and conspiracy theorists suggested her presence at the scene could not be a coincidence, but she said it was pure chance: her family was out shopping and wanted to eat at a local Nando's.

The inquiry is examining the death of Dawn Sturgess, 44, who was poisoned by novichok in June 2018 after it was apparently left in a discarded perfume bottle. The Skripals were poisoned by novichok in Salisbury in March 2018 but survived.

In a statement read out to the inquiry, McCourt said she, her husband and two children were in Salisbury on a day out on Sunday 4 March 2018 when they came upon the Skripals on a bench.