At least 300 schools in Italy were evacuated on Wednesday after all of them received the same email claiming bombs had been planted in the buildings. The sender signed it "Mikhail Andropov, leader of the Wilayat of Misogynistan". He also claimed responsibility for emailed bomb threats to TV stations in Bulgaria and Ireland last Friday.
Soon after, schools in Scotland and Northern Ireland got similar threats. They were not evacuated. Authorities there believe the threats are fake and advised schools not to evacuate.
The Education Authority in Northern Ireland asked schools to stay open because police do not think the message is credible. "The message is similar to a malicious threat sent last month, which the PSNI (Police Service of Northern Ireland) declared a hoax," the authority said. On Wednesday afternoon, police said checks showed the email to schools was sent from outside the UK.
In Italy, a government source said checks had found no evidence that the threats were real. Prime minister Giorgia Meloni said there were no signs of danger.
Education minister Giuseppe Valditara said the threats were probably false alarms, but officials did not want to take risks. He said the real number of evacuated schools could be higher than reported. He added that the sheer number of schools targeted showed the threat was not credible.
At one school in Rome, parents got a message through an app around noon saying all pupils had been taken to safety under the supervision of teachers.
Defence minister Guido Crosetto called the threats "part of a strategy that is already quite clear: an attempt to spread fear and create anxiety". He said foreign states or hostile groups are not always behind such acts. Some people want attention, and some are madmen who cannot wait to spread terror in a city or region, Crosetto said.
"Wilayat" is a word of Arabic origin for a province under Islamic rule, often used today for branches of Islamic State. The sender's pseudonym joins it with the ending "-stan" and the word "misogyny", meaning hatred of women.
The threats to schools came days after a wave of bomb alerts on planes in Europe. They also come amid growing worry about so-called hybrid war, in which opponents of the West try to disrupt daily life without necessarily using conventional weapons. Recent examples include cyberattacks on European supermarkets and blood banks, as well as bomb threats against planes and TV stations.
In Europe, such warnings are most often linked to fears of Russian revenge for support for Ukraine. There are also fears about Iran and China. Earlier this week, Iran was named as responsible for a cyberattack on the refrigeration systems of French supermarkets.
On Saturday, Italian foreign minister Antonio Tajani said his personal data had leaked onto the dark web, an encrypted part of the internet that criminal groups also use. Meloni said pro-Russian hackers were behind the leak.