At least 300 schools across Italy were evacuated on Wednesday, November 11, after receiving an identical bomb threat message, Education Minister Giuseppe Valditara said. Authorities said their checks had found no evidence that the threats were credible, and the minister described the alerts as presumed hoaxes.
Speaking to the La7 television channel, Valditara said the number of affected schools was expected to increase. He pointed to the scale of the alerts as a reason to doubt their authenticity, saying the large number of schools involved “demonstrates how little credibility the threat has.”
One school in Rome used a messaging app to notify parents that students had been moved to a safe area following the nationwide alert. Its message said the children remained under the supervision of teaching staff, informing families of both the evacuation and the arrangements for their care.
A copy of the threatening email seen by Reuters carried the signature “Mikhail Andropov, leader of the Vilayat of Misoginistan.” The same purported author had claimed responsibility for bomb threats emailed to newsrooms in Ireland and Bulgaria on the preceding Friday. The name appeared as the message's claimed authorship.
A spokesperson for Rome police said Italian police forces were investigating the matter. Separately, a government source said on Wednesday that checks by Italian authorities had produced no evidence supporting the credibility of the school threats. The source described them as part of a strategy “aimed at generating alarm and concern.”
The evacuations came against a backdrop of growing concern in Europe over so-called hybrid warfare threats. Supermarkets, blood banks, air traffic and television broadcasters have been among the targets of such threats, which formed the wider security context surrounding Wednesday's alerts in Italy.
Schools in Northern Ireland also received a threatening email on Wednesday, according to the Northern Ireland Education Authority. The authority said a large number of schools had been sent the message but advised them to remain open because police did not consider the threat credible.
The Education Authority said the email resembled a bogus threat circulated the previous month that the Police Service of Northern Ireland had declared a hoax. Its advice to keep schools open differed from the evacuations reported in Italy, where police investigations were under way.
