Bomb threats ‘sent to schools across Europe’

Bomb threats similar to that sent to schools in Cyprus last Friday were sent to schools in several other European countries, police spokesman Christos Andreou said on Monday.

Speaking to the Cyprus News Agency (CNA), he said Europol had informed him that schools, shopping centres and other places in European countries had also been sent bomb threats last week.

On the email sent to Cypriot schools, he said its wording “was also used in other messages and was translated badly into Greek to be sent to Cyprus.”

He added that the police are now waiting for a response from Interpol to establish whether the sender of the email was from a specific country outside of Europe.

Meanwhile, the Limassol public kindergartens parents’ associations’ federation on Monday said they had identified “gaps” in the authorities’ handling of bomb threats, and thus called for “measures to be taken to deal with them”.

The federation added it was the first time “this type of mass threatening message with terrorist content” had been sent to the island’s schools and it “highlighted serious issues which should be brought to light”.

It asked that the protocol for dealing with such incidents be reevaluated, “especially for matters of terrorism in schools”.

The measures they suggested included police patrols outside schools, the placement of security guards, and the monitoring of CCTV footage in schools.

“This bad-taste hoax could be described as a good exercise of our preparedness, but it highlighted gaps which in our view we will need to address seriously and effectively as times change,” it added.

Schools across the island received bomb threats by email last Friday, with some schools choosing to evacuate their children as a precaution.

The email was sent from a Russian domain email address, through it is perfectly possible that this could have been achieved without the sender having been located in Russia.