The banned chemical weapon VX nerve agent was used to kill Kim Jong Nam, the North Korean ruler’s outcast half brother who was attacked by two women who rubbed the substance on his face at the airport in Malaysia’s capital last week, police said Friday.
(FOX)- Authorities were checking the Kuala Lumpur airport for traces of the toxin, 11 days after the attack. But news that a powerful nerve agent was used to kill someone in a crowded airport raised serious questions about public safety.
Police said one of the alleged attackers had been vomiting after the Feb. 13 attack, but there were no reports that anyone else had been sickened.
VX nerve agent, deadly even in minute amounts, was detected on Kim’s eyes and face, Malaysia’s inspector general of police said in a written statement, citing a preliminary analysis from the country’s Chemistry Department.
VX nerve agent has the consistency of motor oil and can take days or even weeks to evaporate. It could have contaminated anywhere Kim was afterward, including medical facilities and the ambulance he was transported in, experts say.
The death of Kim Jong Nam, whose daylight assassination in a crowded airport terminal seems straight out of a spy novel, has unleashed a diplomatic crisis, especially as speculation grows that Pyongyang dispatched a hit squad to Malaysia to kill the exiled older sibling of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.