Numerous schools across Italy were evacuated on Wednesday after some 6,300 education centers received a hoax bomb threat via email.
The public broadcaster Rai reports that thousands of Italian schools received the threatening email during the morning hours of Wednesday, right as a new school day was underway. The situation prompted the evacuation of some, but not all of the thousands of schools. Police officers searched through the premises of the evacuated centers, but found nothing.
Italian Education Minister Giuseppe Valditara affirmed to reporters that there was a “non-existent risk” derived from the hoax email, but pointed out to the recent string of false bomb threats across Europe.
Rai, and other Italian outlets, published the contents of the hoax threat — which was reportedly sent to the schools through email addresses from Taiwan. In the text, an anonymous individual claiming to be “Mikhail Andropov” from the Vilayat (“Province” in Arabic) of “Misoginistan” threatened with the “annihilation” and “genocide” of Italians.
“I have been preparing for this for a long time: to kill every single one of you. I have just left a powerful explosive device with a remote detonator inside a plastic bag in your building,” the hoax email reportedly read.
“I positioned it so that the shock wave will spread throughout the entire building. All that will remain of you are bones and a bloody pulp,” the text continued.
