Bomb threats hit schools in Italy, Scotland and Northern Ireland, Digi Mart USA News: Some 6,300 schools across Italy and more than 700 in Scotland and Northern Ireland have received bomb threats, according to local authorities.
In Italy, a number of buildings were evacuated as a precaution, but Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said checks so far had not indicated any evidence of “concrete danger.” “These reports appear rather linked to a strategy intended to cause alarm and concern,” she said on Facebook.
Scotland’s education secretary, Mairi McAllan, said there was no risk to the public and that specialist cyber-crime officers were working to identify the source of the messages. In Northern Ireland, education officials told schools to remain open unless otherwise advised by police.
It is unclear whether the incidents are connected.
“As a parent and as a constituency MSP I understand just how concerning this will be for parents, for pupils, for carers and for school staff,” McAllan said.
Scottish police had earlier said the warnings were “immediately assessed” as hoaxes. However, some local authorities confirmed that some schools had been evacuated.
“Our advice is that there is no requirement to evacuate schools or keep children away from education based solely on the content of the emails,” Police Scotland said.
Italian officials said a single email appeared to have been sent on Wednesday to the inboxes of 6,300 of a total of 7,476 state schools, and private schools were unaffected. The message, said to be from a certain “Mikhail Andropov, leader of Vilayat di Misoginistan,” caused alarm in many schools.
The BBC has seen the email sent to Scottish schools, which appeared to have similar wording and also referenced the name Mikhail Andropov, although as leader of a “Red Owl” project.
Italy’s Education Minister Giuseppe Valditara said the incidents involving Italian schools were probably a “cyber-attack, not a genuine risk,” adding that there appeared to be a clear strategy behind the rash of threats across Europe targeting flights, supermarkets and even hospitals.
Italian airports, along with airlines elsewhere in Europe, were hit by a series of bomb hoaxes last week that prompted scares, evacuations and widespread disruption. Although a number of threats were claimed by an extremist misogynistic group, it later denied any link to the false warnings.
On Wednesday, Milan headteacher Anna Bertato told Italian media she had checked the sender’s email address online: “It was already classified as spam by a student at a university in Taiwan.”
Another Milan headteacher, Massimo Nunzio Barrella, told the Adnkronos news agency that he had immediately realized the email was spam when it arrived in his inbox at 08:59. He decided not to evacuate his school and reassured parents who phoned in.
“The text seemed almost comical,” Barrella said. “It was like a message from Martians: ‘We have come to annihilate you.’ I even had a bit of a laugh.”
Although many schools were initially evacuated on Wednesday, the alarm was quickly lifted and pupils were allowed to return to class. Some parents decided to take their children home for the day, but most schools in Milan did not send their pupils home.
According to Italian reports, some 280 school headteachers had already received threats in recent days.
In a statement, the head of the central Umbria region, Stefania Proietti, said “checks conducted so far in Umbrian schools have proved negative, and law enforcement is working rapidly and carefully to verify each report.”
