BERLIN, Dec 11: Four people in Germany have shown signs of contamination with polonium 210, police said on Monday after traces of the highly radioactive substance were found in homes used by a contact of poisoned former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko.

Police in Hamburg said the four people concerned were related or linked to Dmitry Kovtun, a Russian businessman who met Litvinenko in a London hotel on Nov 1, the day he fell ill.

They were Kovtun’s ex-wife, the couple’s two small children, aged one and three, and her boyfriend.“With the four people mentioned in the close circle of Mr Kovtun, there is the suspicion that this (radiation) might possibly have entered their bodies,” said Thomas Menzel, the policeman who is leading the German investigation.

He said they were undergoing further tests.—AFP