Thousands of schools across Italy were evacuated on Wednesday after receiving bomb threat emails, triggering panic among students, parents and teachers in the latest wave of suspicious threats targeting European institutions.
Around 6,300 schools received the warnings, forcing authorities to quickly clear classrooms and move students to safe locations while police monitored the situation.
The threats also caused major disruption to families, with many parents abandoning their daily routines to rush to schools and collect their children.
Nensi Bego, whose daughter attends Mazzini Middle School in Rome, said the incident left her child frightened and confused.
“My daughter Dafne started crying because the kids did not understand what was happening, and she was still shaken when I picked her up,” she told Reuters.
“This is so annoying. It’s obvious it’s just a hoax that disrupts lessons and disrupts everyone’s day.”
A copy of the email seen by Reuters also contained a threat against Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.
Meloni said the alerts posed no danger, adding that police and other public agencies were monitoring the situation.
One school in Rome informed parents through a messaging application that all students had been moved to a safe area and were being supervised by teachers.
The email was reportedly signed by “Mikhail Andropov, leader of the Vilayat of Misoginistan”.
A national security source told Reuters that sending the messages had been surprisingly easy, as schools’ email addresses were publicly accessible.
“The (school) emails are public. (Sending the bomb alert messages) was as easy as drinking a glass of water,” the source said.
The same individual claiming responsibility for the Italian threats had also reportedly taken credit for bomb threat emails sent to newsrooms in Ireland and Bulgaria on Friday.
Meanwhile, Scotland, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland reported receiving similar threatening emails from abroad. However, authorities classified the messages as a hoax, and school activities were not disrupted.
The latest incident comes amid growing concerns over a series of threats and cyberattacks targeting everyday services and institutions across Europe, including supermarkets, blood banks, air traffic systems and broadcasters.
Some European officials suspect Russia could be behind a wider campaign aimed at disrupting daily life in countries supporting Ukraine following Moscow’s invasion.
Russia has denied involvement, accusing Western countries of conducting a smear campaign.
Iran has also come under suspicion following a separate cyberattack in France, which reportedly disabled refrigerators in hundreds of supermarkets last week.
France summoned Iran’s ambassador on Tuesday over the incident, but Tehran rejected the accusations as “baseless and hostile”.
Italian Defence Minister Guido Crosetto said Wednesday’s bomb threats appeared to be part of a deliberate effort to create public anxiety.
He described the incidents as a strategy “to spread fear and create anxiety”, according to Italian news agency Adnkronos.
However, Crosetto cautioned against automatically blaming foreign governments or hostile organisations, saying some incidents could also involve attention-seekers and individuals seeking to spread panic.
Antonello Giannelli, head of the Italian School Principals Association, said the threats had caused distress among students, families and school employees.
“Even though today’s threats are clearly hoaxes, we cannot underestimate the consequences of incidents that alarm entire school communities and disrupt the normal conduct of educational activities,” he said.
