Hoax bomb threats target schools across Italy, UK and Ireland
Thousands of schools across Italy, the UK and Ireland received hoax bomb threat emails, forcing at least 300 Italian schools to evacuate. The email in Italy was reportedly signed by the same person behind threats sent to newsrooms in Bulgaria and Ireland.
Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni said there was no indication of any “concrete danger” to schools and that the threats appeared aimed at “generating alarm and concern”
Schools across Italy were evacuated on Wednesday following a series of bomb threats, which Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni described as hoaxes, insisting that there was no concrete danger. A 19-year-old student at Rome’s Virgilio High School, Sofia De Ponte, told AFP that the school’s principal announced that a bomb threat had been received by email before ordering an evacuation.
Although the government believes the threat to be a hoax, it has nevertheless prompted concerns about "hybrid warfare" in Europe. Similar messages were sent in Northern Ireland, Ireland, and Bulgaria.
Although the government believes the threat to be a hoax, it has nevertheless prompted concerns about "hybrid warfare" in Europe. Similar messages were sent in Northern Ireland, Ireland, and Bulgaria.
Police assure parents and teachers that warnings were bogus despite pupils being evacuated from some sites UK politics live – latest updates Hundreds of schools in Scotland and Northern Ireland were hit by a fresh wave of hoax bomb threats on Wednesday, with some sites evacuated as a precaution. Police said at least 470 schools, from Dumfries in the south of Scotland to Aberdeenshire and Orkney in the north, had received the hoax warnings.
Emails containing the false warnings were sent to schools in Rome, Naples, Vicenza, Florence, Pisa, Trieste and other Italian cities, officials say.