The UK police have sent two officers to the Сity Stay Hotel in the Bow area of East London where the authorities say the two suspects in the Salisbury nerve agent attack case stayed before the incident in early March.
A police officer announcedthat he and his colleague had been deployed to the hotel at around 11:00 a.m. (10:00 GMT) on Wednesday because the place was attracting a lot of media and public attention.
The situation at the site was calm and the hotel continued to operate as normal, the officer added.
A crowd of reporters had gathered in the vicinity of the hotel, but only guests were allowed to enter.
The area where the hotel is located is one of London’s poorer, more unstable neighborhoods, where migrants, predominately from Africa, the Middle East and Asia, live.
UK police said earlier in the day that in May, some samples taken in the hotel room where the suspects stayed before the attack showed contamination at levels below that which would cause concerns for public health.
A hotel spokesman said earlier on Wednesday, citing the police and Public Health England, that the hotel’s quests and staff faced no health risk.
The UK police said earlier in the day that it had identified the suspects as Russian nationals Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov. According to the law enforcement agency, both men came to the United Kingdom two days prior to the March 4 poisoning of former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia and stayed in the City Stay Hotel.
The UK Foreign Office has accused Moscow of orchestrating the poisoning of the Skripals with the use of the A234 military-grade nerve agent. The country’s Porton Down lab has said, however, that it could not prove that the nerve agent used in the attack was made in Russia or determine its country of origin.
Moscow has denied any involvement in the incident, saying London has not provided sufficient evidence to substantiate its claims.