AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - The world’s chemical weapons watchdog said on Wednesday it has collected samples to identify the substance believed to have caused the July 8 death of a British woman in Amesbury, England, and sickened her partner.

The British government had asked the Hague-based Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) to independently identify a substance that London has found to be Novichok -- the same nerve agent used to poison former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in March.

A team from the OPCW will send two separate samples of the substance to laboratories and report the results to London.