The summit at Palazzo Chigi has concluded: "3,778 schools received threats via email, 77 were evacuated. The instructions given to the prefects worked."

The Interministerial Committee for the Security of the Republic (CISR) held a technical meeting this afternoon at Palazzo Chigi, attended by the Under-Secretary to the Prime Minister and Delegated Authority for the Security of the Republic, Alfredo Mantovano; the Minister of the Interior, Matteo Piantedosi; the Minister of Education and Merit, Giuseppe Valditara; and the technical members. The meeting was convened following a mass mailing of emails containing bomb threats sent yesterday and today to schools across the country with the aim, as stated in a note from Palazzo Chigi, of preventing unfounded threats from disrupting essential services and ensuring the safety of pupils, teachers, school staff and families, and, more generally, the entire national community.

In fact, according to provisional figures, 3,778 schools received threats via email this morning. There were 77 evacuations, and in 36 of these schools, lessons resumed that very morning. The sharp drop in the number of evacuations confirms that the guidance issued this morning by the government to prefects and headteachers following yesterday’s events has been effective. Palazzo Chigi has stated that, in accordance with the timetable agreed during the meeting, the Minister of the Interior will provide operational guidance to the prefectures to ensure the continuity of public services in complete safety.

This afternoon’s meeting will be followed, from tomorrow morning, by the establishment of a select technical working group to provide a framework of procedures and tools aimed at short-, medium- and long-term intervention measures. The measures will concern not only schools but also other potential targets. For each sector, the relevant central government departments will set out the elements needed to rapidly identify unfounded threats and to define criteria, procedures and chains of command. The government, as confirmed by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni during this morning’s discussion with the opposition parties, is prepared to report to Parliament on the measures to be finalised in the coming days.

The summit took place the day after the meeting at Palazzo Chigi with the heads of the intelligence services, Mantovano, Deputy Prime Ministers Tajani and Salvini, and the Ministers of the Interior and Defence, Matteo Piantedosi and Guido Crosetto, and a few hours after Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni met with opposition leaders this morning to share information and strategies with them.

A new email bombing campaign has been reported in the last few hours (targeting email addresses with the Ministry of Education’s domain) containing a bomb threat against Palazzo Chigi and a demand for Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni to resign. Government headquarters explains that the incident “is not considered credible” and has therefore been treated as yet another ‘fake alert’, following which no security checks were initiated. Indeed, apart from the email, “there is no specific indication that this is a genuine threat”. 

Meanwhile, new bomb threat emails have been received at various schools across Italy, from Veneto to Liguria, Umbria, Lazio and Sicily. Some schools have been evacuated, whilst investigations are underway at others. The emails threatening the presence of bombs, as was the case yesterday, are always signed Mikhail Andropov. 

Anti-terrorism prosecutors at the Rome Public Prosecutor’s Office are investigating in connection with the bomb threats received yesterday and today by dozens of schools in the capital. The investigation, coordinated by Chief Prosecutor Francesco Lo Voi, is focusing on the offences of causing alarm and aggravated threats. The prosecutors have received the first reports from the police, who have been tasked with carrying out the investigations; these will also cover the threatening emails sent from foreign servers to the schools’ email addresses. 

To all schools and headteachers, the Ministry of Education has announced that “the Prime Minister’s Office, in consultation with the relevant ministers, has stated – as per the protocols already in place within other government departments – with regard to the phenomenon of mass emails containing alarm reports, that, in the absence of concrete evidence beyond the mere receipt of such mass emails to suggest that a danger exists, buildings should not be evacuated. The note continues: ‘The prefect retains the power to order evacuation measures should he or she have specific and concrete evidence indicating a situation of actual risk. Therefore, schools, should they identify the necessary conditions, may provide the relevant local prefect with any relevant information and evidence required for the necessary assessments’.” 

"In response to the email bombardment containing bomb threats sent this morning to a number of schools, and ahead of the technical CISR meeting convened for this afternoon, the government, through the Ministers of the Interior and Education, has immediately instructed the prefects and headteachers respectively to ensure that school activities continue as normal, unless – according to the assessment that each prefect will carry out in their area – there are specific and well-founded grounds for alarm”. This is the message from Palazzo Chigi. "The decision by some headteachers to order the evacuation of individual schools took place immediately after the arrival of the email bombardment, and before they received instructions from the ministers."