A vial of deadly radioactive poison was discovered in place of chocolate during an Easter egg hunt in south-west Germany – this is a breaking story
10:08, 06 Apr 2026Updated 10:51, 06 Apr 2026
The poison was discovered during an Easter egg hunt (stock image)(Image: Getty Images)
A vial of suspected radioactive poison – the same substance Russia has used assassinate its critics – was discovered in place of chocolate during an Easter egg hunt in south-west Germany.
The small plastic bottle, labelled “Polonium 210”, was found in the garden of a home in Vaihingen an der Enz, near Stuttgart, on Easter Sunday, Germany’s DPA reported. Two men discovered the vial and alerted emergency services, prompting 138 personnel and 41 vehicles to respond. District fire chief Andy Dorroch said both men were unharmed.
It has not yet been confirmed whether the 50-millilitre vial actually contained polonium-210, a highly radioactive and rare isotope that is toxic if ingested or inhaled. The isotope is believed to have killed Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
“We are assuming that this is indeed the substance in question,” Dorroch said, noting that the name was “not just scribbled on by hand, but was clearly and officially labelled”. The vial weighed an estimated 200 grams, which would be consistent with a heavy substance like polonium, he said.
However, initial on-site measurements to detect radioactivity came back negative, Dorroch said. Officials from the Environment Ministry collected the vial in Vaihingen an der Enz in order to analyse its contents, police said.
Litvinenko, a former agent for the KGB and its post-Soviet successor agency, the FSB, became violently ill in 2006 after drinking tea laced with polonium-210 at a hotel in London. He died three weeks later at the age of 43.
Yasser Arafat is also believed to have been poisoned by Israel with the radioactive substance, a claim Israel has denied. Arafat died under mysterious circumstances at a French military hospital in 2004, a month after falling ill at his Israeli-besieged West Bank compound.
In 2012, Switzerland’s Institute of Radiation Physics discovered traces of polonium-210, a deadly radioactive isotope, on some of Arafat’s belongings. Soil and bone samples were subsequently taken from Arafat’s grave in the West Bank.
Al Jazeera published the Swiss team’s 108-page report on the soil and bone samples the following year. The results “moderately support the proposition that the death was the consequence of poisoning with polonium-210,” the report said.
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