Bomb hoaxes hit 1,800 Italian schools for a second day

Bomb threats hit schools across Italy for a second straight day on Thursday, with roughly 1,800 of them — from Milan in the north down to Sicily — reporting a message similar to the one that threw the country into chaos a day earlier. No devices have been found anywhere.

Wednesday's email landed at 6,300 of Italy's 7,476 state schools and was signed by a certain Mikhail Andropov, described as leader of Vilayat di Misoginistan. Some officials believe that message originated in Taiwan, according to the BBC.

Thursday's version carried the same signature but appears to have been sent from the hacked account of a teacher in the Philippines, according to the BBC. The Italian government is now telling schools not to empty their buildings, advising that in the absence of concrete evidence beyond the receipt of a mass email indicating danger, schools must not be evacuated.

Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has called it a strategy intended to cause alarm and concern. The scare is not confined to Italy: schools in Scotland and Northern Ireland also received threats on Wednesday, though it is unclear whether the incidents are connected.

On Thursday morning a bomb alert at a Calais rail station delayed both international and national trains in northern France. The wave follows a run of bomb hoaxes last week targeting airports and airlines in several European countries.

Some of those earlier threats were claimed by an extremist misogynistic group, which later denied any link to the false warnings.