Easter celebrations descended into chaos in a German city after a vial of deadly radioactive poison was found instead of chocolate. A bottle labelled « Polonium 210 », a rare isotope used by Russia to assassinate its critics, was found in the garden of a home near Stuttgart, southwest Germany, on Easter Sunday. They reported the discovery to the police, who dispatched 138 members of emergency personnel and 41 vehicles to the scene, according to reports.
A radiation protection unit was also deployed to the property in Vaihingen an der Enz, The Sun reports. A spokesperson for the local fire department said the vial was thought to be « genuine », with a label « not just scribbled on by hand » but « clearly and officially marked ».
Polonium-210 was the deadly substance behind Vladimir Putin‘s assassination of former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko in 2006.
The Kremlin critic died in agony in his new home of London after being poisoned during a meeting with ex-KGB agents Andrei Lugovy and Dmitri Kovtun.
Palestinian political leader Yasser Arafat was also suspected to have been poisoned by the isotope in 2004, with Swiss scientists detecting levels 18 times higher than the normal amount in his remains.
Polonium-210 can be extremely hard to detect because once ingested, all the radiation remains in the body.
Litvinenko was thought to have been killed after the colourless and odourless substance was slipped into a cup of tea, with the poison then causing widespread damage to the body.
Reactive particles created by the radiation can form toxic compounds which are deadly to the surrounding cells, with only a few milligrams required for a lethal dose.
The two men who found the vial in Vaihingen an der Enz were unharmed, reports suggest, with the German Ministry for the Environment now expected to test the substance to confirm its makeup.
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