Bomb alert emailed to about 6,300 Italian schools prompts widespread evacuations

At least 300 schools across Italy received the same emailed bomb alert on Wednesday 11 November, prompting widespread evacuations, Education Minister Giuseppe Valditara said on La7's programme L'Aria che tira. He said the figure was set to rise and that the count of 300 was about half an hour old when he spoke. He later put the number at 312 at a press point in Brussels, Corriere della Sera reported. Reuters reported that Valditara described the alerts as presumed hoaxes. No explosive device had been reported found. Meloni called a 4 p.m. meeting at Palazzo Chigi, the government's seat in Rome.

The email went to school headteachers, Euronews reported, and ANSA reported it was sent to educational institutions in various cities. Reuters said it saw a copy signed "Mikhail Andropov, leader of the Vilayat of Misoginistan". No source has verified that name or any such group. The text, published by La Repubblica and Euronews, threatened "a genocide against the Italians". It also claimed a bomb had been planted in the engine of "your prime minister's car". Euronews said the contents had yet to be verified.

Classrooms emptied from Trieste to Sicily

Lessons were suspended and precautionary evacuations ordered in numerous schools, including in Rome, Milan, Naples, Palermo and Bologna, according to La Repubblica's live blog. In Genoa, a series of emails arrived around 11am. In Trieste, more than a dozen schools were evacuated, local news site Trieste Prima reported. Digos (the police counter-terrorism and political crime unit), Carabinieri and bomb-disposal experts attended. In Modena, at least five secondary schools and one primary school were emptied.

Many closures were brief. In Turin, pupils returned to classrooms around 11:40am, many having left coats and rucksacks behind. In Arezzo, children from the Tricca primary school waited for their parents in Pertini Park. At the Natta Institute in Bergamo, where the alert came shortly after 10am, a pupil said: "A caretaker told us to evacuate immediately. She burst into the classroom shouting."

The strain showed. Mario Rusconi, president of the National Association of Headteachers in Rome, said, as Repubblica reported, that a headteacher who failed to act on an alert "will be held accountable" if it proved real. He said very young children were left out in the cold, and parents had to leave work to collect their children. Venice mayor Simone Venturini, quoted by La Repubblica, called the situation "unacceptable" and said it forced "a huge effort in terms of coordination", including reorganising school transport.

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Cheap to send, costly to answer

The cost to the sender was, on available evidence, one email. The cost to the state was a day of disrupted classrooms and school transport. Parents left work to collect children, police, Carabinieri, fire brigades and bomb-disposal teams worked in many provinces, and a cabinet-level meeting was called. That asymmetry holds whoever wrote the message.

It also frames the bind Rome describes. Officials speak of a strategy but name no author. Crosetto's own remark that opportunists can use the same tactic means the hybrid-warfare label can be neither confirmed nor excluded on present evidence. Reuters noted that European officials fear hybrid disruptions which many have blamed on Russia, and that Moscow denies involvement. Il Foglio reported that the same pseudonym was used in recent threats to European broadcasters. Rusconi's warning that a headteacher who ignored a real alert would be held accountable shows why schools cannot treat any alert as a prank.

Four things to watch: the outcome of the 4 p.m. meeting, and Crosetto's report to Parliament, which Euronews said he will give. Also whether the postal police confirm falsified sender addresses, and whether further waves follow.