At least 300 schools across Italy were evacuated on Wednesday, November 11, following a wave of identical bomb threat emails that disrupted classes from Rome to Friuli and Basilicata.
The alerts, which began arriving Wednesday morning, prompted school administrators to activate emergency security procedures. Students and staff were moved to designated safe areas while police and bomb disposal teams conducted security sweeps of the premises.
Italian Education and Merit Minister Giuseppe Valditara confirmed the scale of the disruption during an interview with the La7 television channel, noting that the number of affected institutions had reached 312 by the time he spoke at a briefing in Brussels, and could rise further as reports are processed.
In one instance, the Giovanni Cagliero school complex in Rome, which houses the Gianni Rodari primary school, received the alert at approximately 10:15 am, according to principal Anna Fucile.
The threatening messages, signed by an individual identifying as “Mikhail Andropov, leader of the Vilayat of Misoginistan,” claimed that explosive devices with remote detonators had been planted inside school buildings. Other schools affected include the Largo San Pio V comprehensive school, the Ranocchio Scarabocchio nursery school, and the Seneca grammar school in Rome.
Despite the widespread evacuations, Italian officials have characterized the threats as part of a campaign to sow fear rather than a genuine physical danger. “We must avoid alarmism, as it is clear from the content of the email that there is virtually no concrete risk,” Valditara said.
He argued that the high volume of schools targeted “demonstrates how little credibility the threat has.” Minister Valditara further indicated that authorities are treating the incident as a likely hoax, noting that the nature of the alerts suggests a strategy of destabilization.
Prime Minister Meloni convened a meeting at 4:00 pm at Palazzo Chigi to assess the situation and coordinate the necessary response. This high-level meeting included Deputy Prime Ministers Matteo Salvini and Antonio Tajani, Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi, Defense Minister Guido Crosetto, and senior officials from the intelligence services and the National Cybersecurity Agency (ACN).
The disruption extended beyond Italy, with schools in the United Kingdom also receiving threatening emails on Wednesday. In Northern Ireland, the Education Authority reported that a large number of schools were targeted with messages that closely resembled a hoax reported last month.
The Department of Education there advised schools to remain open unless otherwise advised by the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), which is responsible for determining the credibility of such messages. Police Scotland similarly said that threatening messages sent to schools in their jurisdiction were being treated as hoaxes.
While the pseudonym “Mikhail Andropov” has appeared in threats sent to European television broadcasters and reports regarding flight bomb alerts—including a November 3 incident where an Italian Air Force escort accompanied a Dublin-to-Rome Ryanair flight—investigators have not yet publicly linked these disparate incidents into a single, coordinated campaign.
In that instance, the emails specifically named Ryanair flight FR4438, which was airborne at the time. Italian Postal Police opened an investigation into those emails, though searches at institutions like the Giovanni Cagliero complex found no evidence of explosives.
Authorities emphasize that whether or not the threatened danger materializes, the goal of these incidents is to force a country to act as if a genuine threat exists, thereby damaging the reputation of institutions and forcing systems to cease normal operations.
