Italian Schools Evacuate Following Wave of False Bomb Threats Across Europe

Italian authorities evacuated more than 300 schools on Wednesday after receiving emailed bomb threats, part of a broader series of hoaxes that also targeted educational institutions in the United Kingdom and Ireland.

Education Minister Giuseppe Valditara confirmed that at least 312 schools across Italy received the alerts, which triggered immediate security sweeps and the evacuation of students and staff in cities including Rome, Naples, and Florence.

The incidents follow a pattern of recent disruptions across Europe, including false bomb threats against airlines and cyberattacks on supermarket refrigeration systems, raising concerns about the potential for coordinated campaigns to destabilize public institutions.

“These are very delicate considerations, because there is always the risk that there is someone else behind the madman,” said Giuseppe Valditara, the Italian education minister.

The emails, which were signed by a sender using a Russian pseudonym, contained violent language and threatened a mass attack, according to government sources.

Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said the government was monitoring the situation closely and had convened a meeting of senior ministers and intelligence officials to discuss the security response.

“These reports appear rather linked to a strategy intended to cause alarm and concern,” said Giorgia Meloni, the Italian prime minister.

While Italian schools were evacuated, police in Scotland and Northern Ireland reported receiving similar emails but stated they were treating the messages as hoaxes without requiring school closures.

Police Scotland said its assessment was that the messages did not represent a credible threat, while Irish authorities described the alerts as generic communications sent to multiple institutions.

At a high school in Rome, students were initially unaware of the nature of the emergency after the evacuation alarm sounded.

“They are saying it was a bomb alert because an email arrived from Russian hackers in which they said they would have killed everyone. It was pretty violent,” said Anita Bartocci, an 18-year-old student.

Italian Defence Minister Guido Crosetto said the threats were an attempt to spread fear, noting that the ease of sending such emails makes it difficult to distinguish between genuine dangers and malicious hoaxes.

“It's too easy. Any one of us can use the available means and instruments to send an email to a school, a daycare, an airline, saying that there's a bomb,” said Guido Crosetto, the Italian defence minister.

Investigators have not yet established a formal link between the school threats, recent flight diversions, and other infrastructure attacks, leaving it unclear if the incidents are part of a single coordinated campaign.