Reuters
Source: Reuters
More than 3,700 Italian schools received hoax bomb warnings on Thursday but the vast majority of them opted to remain open, following new advice from the government for handling such security threats.
Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government said public buildings should be cleared only if there is concrete evidence of danger after a wave of fake bomb alerts on Wednesday triggered school closures across Italy.
On Thursday, 3,778 schools received threats but only 77 were evacuated, some of them for only a short while, the prime minister’s office said. The alarm had been more widespread on Wednesday, when 6,300 schools were affected and panic spread among parents.
These were the latest in a series of hoaxes and cyberattacks that have recently also targeted supermarkets, blood banks, air traffic systems and broadcasters across Europe.
As the alarm spread for a second day, Meloni summoned opposition leaders to her office for talks on how to handle similar incidents and announced plans for a protocol aimed at limiting their impact.
“Buildings should not be evacuated in the absence of concrete elements beyond the mere receipt of a mass email that would suggest a genuine danger exists,” the prime minister’s office said.
The warnings on Thursday were again signed by “Mikhail Andropov” and included another threat to the prime minister, who was also targeted on Wednesday.
Some European officials suspect Russia may be behind a campaign of disruption to everyday life in European nations supporting Ukraine after Moscow’s invasion.
