Thousands of schools in Scotland, Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland and Italy received hoax bomb threats by email on Wednesday, prompting evacuations at some sites and an international police investigation.
Police Scotland said about 1,000 schools, from Dumfries to Aberdeenshire and Orkney, had received the messages, up from an earlier estimate of 470. At least 300 schools in Northern Ireland were affected. In Italy, the email reached about 6,300 of the country’s 7,476 state schools, officials said.
Police in all four countries said the threats were not credible.
Police Scotland said there was “nothing to suggest that they represent a credible threat or that there is any wider threat to the public”, and that there was no need to evacuate schools or keep children at home.
Assistant Chief Constable Mark Sutherland said officers had judged the emails a hoax within about an hour. “First and foremost, I’ll be sending my daughter to school tomorrow,” he said. “I think what is important is that we continue to be vigilant, but we are not alarmed.”
He said police believed the emails came from the same source as those sent elsewhere in the UK, but it was “too early to say” who was behind them. The force’s cyber and fraud unit is working with law enforcement partners in the UK and abroad.
Education secretary Mairi McAllan told MSPs the situation was “very much in hand”.
Some councils evacuated schools as a precaution before police issued their assessment. Most schools in Dumfries and Galloway received the email, and some sent pupils home. In Edinburgh, schools were briefly evacuated, and Queensferry High School sent its pupils home. Some schools in the Highlands activated their emergency procedures.
Glasgow council told parents the threats were a hoax and that schools should not be evacuated. Schools across Scotland were later told to readmit any evacuated pupils and resume lessons.
In Northern Ireland, the Education Authority told schools to stay open unless advised otherwise by police, noting the message was similar to a bogus threat sent last month. The PSNI said the email came from outside the UK. “At this stage, we consider the risk to the public as low,” said Assistant Chief Constable Anthony McNally.
In the Republic of Ireland, the Garda said a “generic communication” sent to schools was “not credible”, and did not call for any evacuations.
In Italy, hundreds of schools were evacuated before the alarm was lifted and pupils returned to class. The email, signed by a “Mikhail Andropov”, told recipients: “We have come to annihilate you.” The emails sent to Scottish schools also referred to the same name.
Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said checks had found “no element” suggesting “a concrete danger”. She said the messages appeared to be linked to “a strategy aimed at generating alarm and concern”, and called a meeting of senior ministers and intelligence chiefs.
Not every school was taken in. Massimo Nunzio Barrella, a headteacher in Milan, said he recognised the email as spam as soon as it arrived and decided not to evacuate. “It was like a message from Martians,” he said.
No one has said who sent the emails, and authorities have not attributed them to any group or state.
Italian ministers believe they are part of a wider campaign. Education minister Giuseppe Valditara said the threats were probably “a cyber-attack, not a genuine risk”, and that there appeared to be a clear strategy behind a recent run of hoaxes across Europe. Defence minister Guido Crosetto said they were aimed at “sowing terror, or creating concern”, adding that it was “too easy” for anyone to email a school, a nursery or an airline claiming there was a bomb.
Last week, airports in Italy and airlines elsewhere in Europe were hit by a wave of bomb hoaxes that caused evacuations and disruption. Some of those threats were claimed by an extremist group, which later denied any involvement.
Schools in Scotland and Northern Ireland received similar hoax threats last month. In Scotland, police took more than 300 calls after messages were sent on 19 October.
Police in Scotland and Northern Ireland say children should go to school as normal, and families should follow their school’s instructions.
“We understand how distressing messages of this nature can be for pupils, parents, carers and school staff,” Police Scotland said.
Anyone with information, or who receives a suspicious message, can contact police on 101.