(Zero Hedge)—Hoax bomb threats emailed to thousands of schools forced evacuations across Italy on Wednesday, and the same kind of message landed in schools in Ireland, Scotland and Northern Ireland, a week after a wave of bomb threats diverted flights across Europe. Italy’s Education Ministry said the email reached about 6,000 schools, and at least 300 were evacuated, ANSA reported.
“We have come to annihilate you. We will carry out a genocide against the Italians” (translated), the email read, according to Il Sole 24 Ore. It claimed a “powerful device” (translated) had been left in a plastic bag “with a remote detonator” (translated), and another line claimed a bomb had been planted in the engine of the prime minister’s car. It was signed “Mikhail Antropov, leader of the Vilayat of Misoginistan” (translated), a name Italian reports also spell Andropov.
Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni wrote on social media that “no element has emerged that would suggest a concrete danger” (translated), and said the alerts “seem attributable to a strategy” to generate alarm and concern (translated). She summoned ministers, the heads of the intelligence services and the National Cybersecurity Agency to Palazzo Chigi at 4 p.m., and invited opposition leaders for 9 a.m. Thursday.
Education Minister Giuseppe Valditara put the count of affected schools at 312 and said “the concrete risk is practically non-existent” (translated), adding that the sheer number of schools involved showed the threat’s “low credibility” (translated). Defense Minister Guido Crosetto said the threats aimed “to spread fear and create anxiety,” Reuters reported, while cautioning that the senders could be attention-seekers rather than a hostile state. Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi said it was “premature to speak of a common direction” (translated).
Prosecutors in Genoa have opened a case for causing alarm, interrupting a public service and serious threats, possibly aggravated by terrorist purpose, with the postal police and the DIGOS counterterrorism police investigating, according to ANSA. The email went out from a compromised account at Taiwan’s Daye University, possibly a former student’s, the agency reported.
Reuters reported that the same purported author claimed responsibility for email bomb threats sent Friday to newsrooms in Ireland and Bulgaria. Its count of Italian schools that received the warning ran to about 6,300.
In Ireland, about 400 schools across Munster got the email Wednesday morning, along with schools in Dublin, The Journal reported; the news site said it received the same kind of threat, as did RTÉ, Sky News, Reuters, the BBC and The Guardian. Gardaí assessed it as “not credible” and did not advise evacuation, and the National Security Intelligence Service is investigating.
About 470 schools in Scotland received the threat, The Telegraph reported, along with some 300 in Northern Ireland, where the Education Authority said the email resembled last month’s hoax. Police Scotland said its enquiries found nothing to suggest a credible threat to the schools or the wider public:
On Oct. 19, Northern Ireland Education Minister Paul Givan said a threat emailed to 160 schools that morning was signed off “Allah Akbar” and appeared to come “from Islamists threatening that Sharia law will be brought into our country,” Euronews reported. Police in Northern Ireland and Scotland treated that wave as a hoax as well.
Last Thursday, as we reported, at least 18 commercial flights in Europe faced bomb threats; an Aer Lingus jet from Dublin to Rome landed at a French military air base, a Finnair flight to Rome was escorted by fighter jets, and no explosives were found.
In Reuters’ telling, the school emails are the latest in a series of threats and cyberattacks across Europe against supermarkets, blood banks, air traffic and broadcasters. France summoned Iran’s ambassador on Tuesday, accusing Tehran of a cyberattack that disabled refrigerators in hundreds of supermarkets; Iran called the accusation “baseless and hostile.” US agencies have since warned that hackers are going after commercial refrigeration controllers, as we noted. Some European officials suspect Russia of running a disruption campaign against Ukraine’s backers, which Moscow denies.
A national security source told Reuters that “the e-mails are public,” and that sending the alerts “was as easy as drinking a glass of water.”
