Fake bomb threats hit schools across Italy, Scotland and Ireland

Police in each country judged the emailed warnings not credible, and investigators are tracing the messages to a hacked university account in Taiwan.

Identical hoax bomb threats by email reached more than 300 schools in Northern Ireland and about a thousand in Scotland on Wednesday morning, the same morning as the alert in Italy. In Italy, police with bomb-disposal experts swept school buildings while parents collected younger children. It was Northern Ireland's second such alert since 19 October.

In a video after the Palazzo Chigi meeting, Italy's Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said the messages aim to frighten and create chaos. "No element has emerged that would suggest there is a concrete danger", she said. She said investigators and the judiciary are working with their European colleagues on who is behind them. Postal police are tracing the email to a hacked account at Dayeh University in Taiwan, apparently a former student's, the Italian news agency Ansa and Focus Taiwan, a Taiwanese news agency, report. One lead would seem to point towards Moscow, Ansa says, though it is unclear whether it is a real clue or an attempt to mislead investigators.

In Scotland, schools from Dumfries to Aberdeenshire and Orkney received the hoax warnings on Wednesday, Police Scotland said. Dumfries and Galloway sent children home, Highland activated emergency protocols in some schools, and Glasgow told parents the claims were false. Edinburgh council said schools were briefly evacuated as a precaution. Police Scotland said the emails went widely to distribution lists across the UK and did not represent a credible threat.

Meloni had convened intelligence chiefs and the national cybersecurity agency, ACN, at Palazzo Chigi on 11 November to coordinate the response, Ansa reports. Education Minister Giuseppe Valditara told families not to give in to alarmism, saying the concrete risk was almost non-existent. He said schools would open normally the next day. In Ireland, the Gardaí, Ireland's national police, assessed similar threats to schools around the country on Wednesday as not credible, according to the Irish Times and the Guardian.

Taiwan's representative office in Italy said on Wednesday night that Taiwan condemns any threatening behaviour and that its agencies are ready to give Italian investigators technical help. Focus Taiwan reports that the case has been described as part of recent hybrid warfare targeting Europe, alongside the disruption of refrigeration in supermarkets and hospital blood banks in France.