Hoax Bomb Threats Hit Hundreds of Schools in Northern Ireland, Scotland, Ireland and Italy

A wave of threatening emails reached hundreds of schools across Northern Ireland, Scotland, Ireland and Italy on Wednesday, forcing evacuations in Italy and putting police across Europe on alert, though authorities said no explosives were found and the threats appear to be hoaxes.

In Northern Ireland, the Education Authority advised schools to stay open because police did not regard the threat as credible, and said the message looked like a bogus threat sent last month that the Police Service of Northern Ireland had already declared a hoax, Al Jazeera reported. Northern Ireland police said the emails appeared to come from outside the United Kingdom, according to CBS News. Newsweek reported that some schools in Northern Ireland, Ireland and Italy were still emptied as a precaution.

Police Scotland said the messages sent to Scottish schools were not credible and were being treated as hoaxes, and that its cyber and fraud unit was working with British and international police to trace the source. Scottish schools were hit by a similar mass hoax on Oct. 19. In the Republic of Ireland, the national police force, the Garda, said a generic message sent to schools was "not credible" and did not advise evacuations.

Italy saw the largest disruption. Authorities evacuated about 300 schools in cities including Rome, Milan and Naples, and the threats reached at least 6,300 Italian schools in all, according to CBS News. The emails were signed with the name of a purported leader of a Russian extremist group that is banned in Moscow, and they also threatened Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, CBS and Euronews reported.

Meloni said there was no sign of concrete danger to schools and said the messages seemed aimed at "generating alarm and concern," the Associated Press reported. Education Minister Giuseppe Valditara said the number of affected schools could rise, and added, "In all likelihood, this is a cyberattack rather than a genuine threat". Defense Minister Guido Crosetto said the alerts are part of a strategy to destabilize the country, and Newsweek quoted him saying, "The strategy is to create concern". CBS reported it was the third wave of threats against Italian schools in a month.

The threats came less than a week after more than 20 European commercial flights received fake bomb threats on Nov. 5, and CBS reported that a message under the same name was sent to Rome airport authorities about two of those flights. Euronews reported that newsrooms in Ireland and Bulgaria received similar threats from the same purported author in recent days.

European governments have not named who is behind the campaign. It follows a cyberattack that disabled refrigerators in hundreds of French supermarkets, which led France to summon Iran's ambassador this week, while some European officials suspect Russia of running a broader sabotage effort, a charge Moscow denies, Al Jazeera reported.

For parents, the message from police was calm: the threats were not credible, and investigators are working to find the sender. Liberty Bell Report will keep tracking this story as police release more details.