Thousands of schools in Italy and Ireland receive hoax bomb threats amid concern over hybrid warfare targeting Europe

Threats prompt school evacuations

Threatening messages reached at least 6,300 schools in Italy and hundreds more in Ireland and across the U.K. In Rome, Milan, Naples, Palermo, Bologna and other cities, lessons were suspended and precautionary evacuations ordered.

Police, bomb disposal specialists and Italy’s Postal Police inspected schools and investigated where the messages originated. As of Wednesday, authorities had reported no explosives or suspicious devices at any of the schools.

Italian email and earlier warnings

Italian news outlets published an email they said schools received Wednesday, claiming to be from “Mikhail Andropov, leader of the Vilayat of Misoginistan.” The article describes the group as a Russian misogynistic extremist organization banned by Moscow several years ago. CBS News confirmed that a message attributed to the same name and group had been sent to airport authorities in Rome the previous week, threatening two flights affected by mass hoaxes on Nov. 5. The school email also threatened Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.

Meloni said there was no “concrete danger” and called the messages part of “a strategy aimed at causing alarm and concern.” She scheduled a meeting with intelligence officials and cybersecurity experts to discuss possible links to the airline threats and identify those responsible. Italian media reported this was the third wave of threats against schools in a month, after messages on Oct. 19 and Nov. 2, when about 280 schools were targeted.

Responses in Ireland and U.K.

Ireland’s national police, the Garda, said it knew of a generic communication sent to educational establishments. The force deemed the threat “not credible” and did not advise schools to evacuate. Police in Northern Ireland said the emails threatening schools there appeared to have come from outside the United Kingdom.

Broader concern over hybrid warfare

The school threats came less than a week after fake bomb warnings affected more than 20 European commercial flights, forcing many to divert. Authorities have not assigned blame for either set of hoaxes, but the incidents have added to concerns about wider hybrid warfare tactics targeting Europe.