Italy, UK, Ireland schools receive bomb threats, hundreds evacuated amid scareThousands of schools in Italy, Scotland, and Northern Ireland received emailed bomb threats on Wednesday, forcing evacuations in some places, while Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said checks found no sign of concrete danger.
Meloni wrote on Facebook that the alerts looked tied to a "strategy intended to cause alarm" and concern.
Education Minister Giuseppe Valditara described the episode as most likely a cyberattack rather than a real risk. He told La7 that the number of schools hit showed how little credibility the threat carried, arguing that anyone with the right tools could email a school, a nursery, or an airline and claim a bomb had been planted.
Defense Minister Guido Crosetto told Adnkronos the threats belonged to a plan "to spread fear and create anxiety." Valditara also linked the school emails to a run of recent hoaxes and cyber incidents in Europe that have touched flights, supermarkets, and blood banks.
Italian officials said a single email reached 6,300 of the country's 7,476 state schools, while private schools were left out. Valditara said at least 300 schools were affected by the alerts and warned the figure could climb. Italian reports also said around 280 head teachers received similar threats in the preceding days.
Students at Rome's Mamiani high school left their building believing a recess bell had rung and only learned outside that a threat had emptied it. Many schools evacuated as a precaution, but the alarm was lifted quickly, and pupils returned to class. Some parents collected their children anyway, though most Milan schools did not send pupils home.
Milan head teacher Massimo Nunzio Barrella told Adnkronos he recognized the message as spam when it landed in his inbox at 08:59 and kept his school open. His colleague Anna Bertato said the sender's address had already been flagged as spam online by a student at a Taiwanese university.
Umbria's regional head, Stefania Proietti, said checks in schools across the region had come back negative and that police were verifying each report.
The Italian email was signed
"Mikhail Andropov, leader of the Vilayat of Misoginistan," according to Reuters.
The BBC, which reviewed the version sent to Scottish schools, reported similar wording but with the author presented as head of a "Re
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