Thousands of schools across Italy, Ireland, Northern Ireland and Scotland received threatening emails on Wednesday, triggering evacuations and concern among families. Authorities assessed the messages as hoaxes, with no credible evidence of the threatened attacks.
In Italy, approximately 6,300 public school groups were targeted, prompting evacuations, police deployments and widespread disruption. The alerts interrupted lessons and forced parents to collect children, while officials investigated the source of the messages.
More than 300 schools in Northern Ireland and around 470 in Scotland also received threatening emails. The Police Service of Northern Ireland said its investigation remained ongoing but assessed the risk to the public as low. Scottish police said the messages did not represent a credible threat and advised that their contents alone did not warrant evacuations.
In the Republic of Ireland, police assessed a generic email sent to educational establishments as not credible. Education Minister Hildegarde Naughton said schools did not need to evacuate on the basis of the message, while urging affected institutions to contact police and follow their guidance.
Italian authorities were reviewing their response on Thursday after further alerts caused some schools to close again. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s office said mass emails should generally not trigger evacuations without concrete indications of danger.
Investigators have not publicly established who was responsible. Authorities have not attributed the threats to a particular group or government, while police enquiries continue into the origin of the messages.
