London — The Italian government said on Thursday (12) that public buildings receiving bomb threats should not be evacuated unless there is concrete evidence of danger, while false threats against schools, flights and other locations continue to affect daily life across Europe.
One day after bomb threats were sent by email to more than 6,000 schools in Italy, resulting in the evacuation of hundreds of them, the Italian government stated that buildings receiving these security alerts should not be evacuated “unless there is concrete evidence, beyond a simple mass email, indicating the existence of danger.”
Read more: At least 300 Italian schools evacuated after bomb threats by email
Who is behind the false threats is not clear, which also affected Ireland, France, Spain, Poland and other countries, nor how they might be related. However, European authorities classified them as part of a coordinated campaign to sow confusion across the continent.
“These messages are not intended to cause harm; they are intended to spread fear,” said on Wednesday Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. “Above all, those who write them want our fear, wasted days, distrust and chaos.”
The authorities stressed that the scale of the threats remains limited. The number of flights affected this month, for example, represents only a fraction of the tens of thousands of flights operated daily in Europe. When a new wave of emails threatened hundreds of Italian schools on Thursday, only a few were evacuated, according to ANSA, Italy’s main news agency.
But tension is high across the continent, where hybrid warfare attacks and intimidation tactics have unsettled air travel and other sectors in recent months, as Russia’s war against Ukraine spills beyond its borders.
“It is clear that we are on maximum alert,” said French President Emmanuel Macron on the margins of a meeting of European and world leaders in Dublin on Thursday. However, he said it was too early to attribute responsibility for the series of bomb threats and added: “At this moment, we cannot say that foreign powers are behind these calls.”
What was threatened?
In early November, bomb threats targeted several European airlines, interrupting dozens of flights and forcing emergency landings, some accompanied by military aircraft. According to authorities, no explosive was found on any of the aircraft.
The apprehension grew after offices of several media outlets in Ireland and other European countries were evacuated due to bomb threats that turned out to be false. Nova, a Bulgarian media organization, said it had received a bomb threat by email that also claimed responsibility for threats against planes.
This week, schools in Italy, Ireland, Northern Ireland and Scotland received bomb threats that were deemed false.
“We strongly condemn these malicious emails and the suffering and disruption caused to school communities,” said the Northern Ireland Education Authority in a statement.
Read more: Bomb threats on flights close airports in Europe and cause diversions
What do the authorities say?
On Friday, following the threats against media companies, the Irish government said: “It seems likely that this is a coordinated disruption campaign.”
Heidi Alexander, Britain’s Secretary of Transport, told the press on November 5 that the government was taking the “malicious false threats” seriously, but that they were not considered credible.
Authorities at Aeroporti di Roma, the company responsible for Rome’s two main airports, said that one of the threats arrived last week in an email written in Italian with the subject “threat notification.” A spokesperson for the airport operator said the email had been sent by “combatants of the Masculine State,” who claimed they wanted to “paint the skies red” with explosions.
Police in Scotland noted that the messages threatening schools on Wednesday were “widely sent to distribution lists across the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland, and our assessment remains that they do not pose a credible threat.” The agency’s Cybercrime and Fraud Unit was investigating the case.
What else is keeping Europe on edge?
Several European countries were affected by suspected cyberattacks against supermarket refrigeration systems, including France in October, and Ireland, Sweden, Belgium and Luxembourg this month.
On Monday, French authorities accused Iran of orchestrating the October attack and issued international arrest warrants for three Iranians “connected to the Electronic and Cyber Center of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.”
Additionally, on November 4, France reported that a cyberattack had hit blood banks by raising the temperature of storage refrigerators.
It is not clear whether the cyberattacks are connected to the bomb threats.
What is the objective?
The identities of those behind the threats and their motivations are not clear. However, some authorities and experts have tried to find a logic behind the targets chosen. Ireland, for example — where media companies and the national airline Aer Lingus received threats — is hosting European and world leader summits this week.
Peter Neumann, a security-studies professor at King’s College London, said he had identified features of a hybrid attack: the targets were varied, and the objective seemed to be to cause disruption.
“The goal of a hybrid campaign is to create chaos, uncertainty, and a sense of threat,” he said.
Hybrid warfare involves tactics such as sabotage and disinformation, used covertly to destabilize countries and erode trust in institutions without provoking a large military response.
Analysts, however, agreed that it can be extremely difficult to attribute with certainty this kind of threat to a single actor or group. The Irish government statement said it was not clear whether the threats had been made by “individuals or as part of a centralized or coordinated effort.”
“Bomb threats are incredibly cheap and carry low risk, in the sense that it is relatively easy to hide their origin,” said Rhys Jones, a security analyst at Osprey, an aviation risk consultancy. This means that a variety of people are capable of carrying them out, including teenagers or pranksters.
Why do false threats cause so much disruption?
Marco Chan, professor of aviation operations at Kingston University in London, said that even when a bomb threat is considered likely false, it would be difficult for authorities to determine that with certainty without a full search.
As a result, he explained, if a threat is received while a flight is in the air, authorities have few options other than keeping the aircraft on the ground for emergency checks.
“If there is any reason for concern about the existence of a bomb threat, it should always be treated as real,” Chan said.
This article was originally published by The New York Times.
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