Bomb threats forced evacuations at Irish media offices Friday and interrupted radio programming in Dublin, briefly disrupting operations at national broadcaster RTE and other outlets, Reuters reported.
Claire Byrne said staff could return to Newstalk’s central Dublin building. Programming restarted at 1000 GMT. Byrne also said one of the threats had been deemed a hoax. The Irish Independent newspaper group said its offices had also been evacuated.
An RTE radio reporter said the broadcaster received an email shortly before 0900 GMT warning that a bomb would explode within 45 minutes. After more than an hour, RTE’s news bulletin resumed from an outside broadcast location.
At the time of Reuters’ report, police were searching RTE’s south Dublin campus building by building, and the site remained closed. In earlier coverage of the Dublin media evacuations, EconoTimes reported that RTE later said the campus had been declared safe; the Associated Press reported that staff returned several hours after the evacuation.
A presenter on RTE Radio One said the email appeared to claim it was sent by people behind the previous day’s hoax threats involving dozens of European flights. Irish Prime Minister Micheal Martin urged people to “remain calm and very focused” in an interview with RTE.
