A MURDER INVESTIGATION has been launched by Scotland Yard after a British spy was found dead at his flat in London.

The man, in his 30s, is believed to have been a communications worker at GCHQ, home of British intelligence services.

The badly-decomposed body was found in a sports bag in the bath after police forced their way into the flat in a five-story townhouse in Pimlico on Monday afternoon.

The headquarters of MI6 is just a few hundred yards from the flat.

A post-mortem will be carried out today to determine the cause of death. The body may have lain in the apartment for some time.

One neighbour told the Telegraph:

A police officer came to my house and asked if we had noticed anything suspicious in the last 10 days, so I think that the body has been there for a while. There have been forensic people in and out since yesterday.

The street has been cordoned off for a technical examination, and counter-terrorism and security services are helping the police in their investigation.

In 2006, the former spy Russian Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned with polonium in London after defecting to the UK in 2000 and reportedly falling out with then-Russian president Vladimir Putin.