Bomb threats at schools via anonymous emails: “We will carry out a genocide of Italians”. Dozens of schools across Italy have been targeted

After aeroplanes and supermarket fridges, it is now the turn of schools. In Rome, today, Wednesday 11 November, a new cyber-alert has been triggered affecting around twenty schools. Among the names that have emerged are the Largo San Pio V comprehensive school, the Ranocchio Scarabocchio nursery school and the Seneca grammar school. The Prefecture of Rome has confirmed the reports to Il Foglio. Similar alerts have also been recorded in dozens of schools across the rest of Italy, from Basilicata to Friuli. The alert was triggered by an anonymous email sent to schools in various cities.

The email reads: “This is Mikhail Andropov, leader of the Vilayat of Misoginistan. We have come to annihilate you. We shall carry out a genocide against the Italians. I have been preparing for this for a long time: to kill every single one of you. I have just left a powerful explosive device with a remote detonator inside a plastic bag in your building. I have positioned it so that the shockwave will spread throughout the building. All that will remain of you are bones and a bloody pulp. Furthermore, we have planted a bomb in the engine of your Prime Minister’s car. After that, we will finish off the survivors with knives.”

The pseudonym “Mikhail Andropov” is the same one used in recent days in threatening emails sent to European television broadcasters, in which the sender also claimed responsibility for the bomb threats that have affected dozens of flights in recent days. Students and school staff at the affected schools have been evacuated and security forces are currently carrying out security sweeps. 

Bomb threats are part of a ‘strategy to sow seeds of concern’, said Defence Minister Guido Crosetto, commenting on the bomb threats at dozens of schools across Italy. ‘The police are working precisely to distinguish between genuine threats and those made by mythomaniacs, whose numbers will only grow because, unfortunately, the mother of fools is always pregnant.’ 

As early as 2 November, a barrage of threatening emails had reached over 270 Italian schools, including some in Rome, leading to evacuations and security checks: they claimed there were bombs, but the alerts turned out to be false. Meanwhile, Italy and other European countries have had to deal with false alarms on flights and attacks on refrigeration systems. These are separate incidents, not necessarily linked, which show just how easy it is to turn everyday services into opportunities for disruption.

Just yesterday, at the Ministry of the Interior, Matteo Piantedosi convened a meeting of senior security officials to tackle the cyber threat. The meeting concluded that some attacks are aimed at spreading unfounded alarm, destabilising and damaging the reputation of institutions. The issue is not merely that a system ceases to function. Rather, even when the threatened danger does not materialize, someone succeeds in forcing a country to act as if it did.