Two British journalists say the passport file of one of the suspects in the nerve agent attack in the UK contains a telephone number that appears to belong to Russia's Defence Ministry.
Belligcat, an online investigative organisation headquartered in the UK, published a phone number on Friday that it said came from what it described as the passport records of Alexander Petrov.
The UK has accused Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov of the attempted murder of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia by spraying a chemical weapon on Skripal's door in March.
The UK believes the two men are Russian military intelligence agents.
The number does not bear a city code. Oliver Carroll of The Independent and Patrick Reevell of ABC News in the US tweeted that they called it using a Moscow prefix and the person who answered said they had reached a Defence Ministry number.
Australian Associated Press
