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Italian authorities evacuated about 300 schools on Wednesday, November 11, after an emailed bomb threat that also named Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, the Associated Press reported. Education Minister Giuseppe Valditara gave the figure and said it could still rise.
Far more schools received the message than were cleared. Al Jazeera, citing Reuters, reported that about 6,300 Italian schools were sent the same hoax email. Reuters said the copy it saw was signed "Mikhail Andropov, leader of the Vilayat of Misoginistan," a name also attached to emailed bomb threats sent to newsrooms in Ireland and Bulgaria last Friday.
Evacuations played out differently from school to school. In Rome, students at the Mamiani high school left the building thinking the alarm was the recess bell and learned of the threat only once they were outside. In Turin, students were moved out of every school site.
Meloni said there was no sign of concrete danger to Italian schools and that the threats appeared meant to cause alarm. She called a meeting of government ministers, and intelligence services are working to identify the source. "It is clear that there is a strategy at play," Valditara said, adding that it was most likely a cyberattack rather than a real threat.
Schools in the UK were targeted on the same day. A large number of schools in Scotland and Northern Ireland received threatening emails on Wednesday. Police Scotland said the messages were not credible and are being treated as hoaxes, and its cyber and fraud unit is working with UK and international law enforcement to trace them. Northern Ireland's Education Authority told schools to stay open, saying the message resembled a bogus threat sent last month that the Police Service of Northern Ireland declared a hoax. Scottish schools also received a mass bomb hoax email on October 19.
The school emails follow weeks of similar disruption across Europe. Flights were diverted, grounded or escorted by fighter jets earlier this month after bomb threats, and Dublin saw hoax bomb threats ahead of this week's summit. Last week, pro-Russian hackers leaked data on Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani and other European officials.
No group has been identified as responsible for Wednesday's emails. Some European officials suspect Russia of directing the wider campaign, which Moscow denies. On Tuesday, France summoned Iran's ambassador over an October cyberattack on French supermarket refrigeration systems, an accusation Tehran called baseless.
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