Key facts
- More than 300 schools in Italy were evacuated after receiving identical bomb threats, local media reported.
- Italian Education Minister Giuseppe Valditara said the threats were fake and most likely a cyberattack.
- More than 270 Scottish schools and over 300 schools in Northern Ireland were targeted, local media reported.
- Irish Education Minister Hildegarde Naughton said police assessed the emails as not credible.
- Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said the country was doing everything necessary to ensure citizens' safety.
More than 300 schools in Italy were evacuated on November 11, 2026, after receiving identical bomb threats, local media reported. Students were taken to safety. Italian Education Minister Giuseppe Valditara later said the threats were fake, telling Italian news agency ANSA: "The concrete risk is virtually nonexistent. It is most likely a cyberattack, not a real threat." He said identifying those behind the threats would be difficult and that the judiciary would investigate.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni wrote on Facebook that the country was "doing everything necessary to ensure the safety of citizens" and that investigations had found no element suggesting a concrete danger persisted.
Schools in the U.K. and Ireland received similar threats, with more than 270 Scottish schools and over 300 schools in Northern Ireland targeted, according to local media. Some schools in England and the Republic of Ireland also received emails. Irish Education Minister Hildegarde Naughton said police assessed the emails as "not credible" and that "there is no need for schools to evacuate."
The threats followed a series of bomb threats against several of Ireland's top media outlets and at least 18 European flights the previous Friday, with at least 22 flights disrupted the day before, forcing some to divert or make emergency landings and prompting fighter-jet escorts. Authorities found no explosives on board the aircraft. ANSA reported that the threats against flights were signed "Fighters of the Male State," a reference to a Russian ultranationalist movement that Moscow banned in 2021. The group's founder denied involvement.