About 300 schools in Italy were evacuated Wednesday after bomb threats, prompting parents to hurry to school gates to collect their children, France 24 reported.
Italian Education Minister Giuseppe Valditara told La7 that officials believed the alerts were hoaxes and that more schools could be affected. Rome police said officers were looking into the threats. A Rome school messaged families that staff were supervising students at a safe location.
Nensi Bego, a parent at Mazzini middle school in Rome, said the evacuation frightened her daughter Dafne. Dafne began crying because students were confused by the situation and remained shaken when Bego collected her. Bego described the threat as a hoax and said it disrupted lessons and everyone’s day.
France 24 reported that schools in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland also received threatening emails Wednesday. Police in Northern Ireland said the emails were hoaxes; Irish police said the threat was not credible and schools did not need to evacuate.
The Italian email carried the name of a purported sender who also claimed responsibility for Friday threats against newsrooms in Ireland and Bulgaria, France 24 reported, citing a copy seen by Reuters.
