LONDON -- British track and field is reeling under the biggest drug scandal in its history.


A total of six British athletes have tested positive this summer, the British Athletic Federation confirmed Thursday. BAF executive chairman Peter Radford said that two English athletes at the Commonwealth Games, shot putter Paul Edwards and 800-meter runner Diane Modahl, had failed earlier drug tests.


Radford also said three club athletes, who were not named pending the outcome of the BAF's internal procedures, have tested positive this season, one for a Class A drug which carries a four-year ban.


This comes two weeks after 200-meter runner Solomon Wariso was pulled out of the European Championships in Helsinki after samples taken at a meet in July tested positive for the banned substance ephedrine. He faces a three-month ban.


"What we have is this range of results which, taken together, is a very exceptional circumstance indeed," Radford said, "which we have never had before in such numbers and in such intensity in British athletics."


The "A" samples for Edwards and Modahl have tested positive, but the corresponding "B" samples have yet to be analyzed. If the "B" samples yield the same result, each would face an International Amateur Athletic Federation hearing and possible ban.


Should Modahl's "B" prove positive, it would jeopardize the British women's team's place in the World Cup finals in London in September.


Britain's women qualified for the final by finishing second to Germany, only two points ahead of Russia, at the European Cup in Birmingham, England, in June. Modahl won the 800 meters at the European Cup, which was held a week after she gave the positive sample.