Moscow Bureau of Tourism Declined to Comment
Americans believed poisoned in Moscow - CNN.com:
MOSCOW, Russia (CNN) -- Two American women have been released from a Moscow clinic after they were hospitalized with possible thallium poisoning, a hospital official said.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Marina Kovalevsky, 42, and her daughter Yana, 26, were well enough to walk out of Sklifosovsky Clinic Wednesday and were expected to leave the country shortly.
The U.S. Embassy confirmed earlier on Wednesday that the women had possibly been poisoned from thallium, a radioactive element.
Moscow's top public health doctor, Nikolai Filatov, said thallium poisoning had been confirmed, according to the RIA-Novosti news agency. (Watch how the investigation is progressing)
U.S. Consular officials had visited them in the clinic and were in contact with family members in Russia. The embassy declined to give more details.
The Russian media said both women were Soviet-born and emigrated to the United States in 1989, and that they had often visited Russia since then. Reports said they arrived in Moscow in mid-February for a wedding, according to The Associated Press.
Russian authorities are investigating how they may have been poisoned, the embassy told CNN. Typical symptoms of thallium poisoning include dehydration, heart complications and hair loss.
Thallium is a colorless, tasteless substance that can be fatal in doses of as little as one gram and has the reputation as a poison of choice for assassins.
It was used by Saddam Hussein to kill several of his Iraqi opponents, AP said. The CIA also reportedly considered using thallium against Fidel Castro, the agency added.
In November, former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko died in a London hospital in a suspected radioactive poisoning.