File photo: A police officer stands in front of the Matteotti Pellico institute as students get evacuated due to a bomb threat across all school sites in Turin, Italy
The latest incident comes less than 10 days after a similar barrage of threatening emails reached more than 270 Italian schools on November 2, including institutions in Rome.
More than 300 schools across Italy were evacuated on Wednesday after receiving identical bomb threat emails warning of a “genocide against the Italians”, triggering security sweeps and disrupting classes across the country. Police are investigating the threats, a spokesperson for Rome police said. He said law enforcement agencies were working to distinguish genuine dangers from threats made by people seeking to cause disruption, warning that such incidents could become increasingly frequent.
The threats were sent to educational institutions in several regions, from Rome to Friuli in the north and Basilicata in the south. Students and staff were moved to safe areas while police searched school premises for explosives. Those alerts also prompted evacuations and security checks, but turned out to be false. The pseudonym Mikhail Andropov has also appeared in threatening emails sent in recent days to several European television broadcasters. The sender reportedly claimed responsibility for bomb threats targeting flights, adding to a series of security scares affecting transport and public services across the continent. Italian defence minister Guido Crosetto described the school threats as an attempt to spread fear and uncertainty.