The Government of the Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, has today established a guideline to deal with massive bomb threats: as a "general line", a building will not be evacuated if there are no "subsequent concrete elements beyond the simple receipt of a mass email", which lead to considering that there is danger. The prefect of each place, the person in charge of the security forces in each city, may order evictions if he deems it necessary.
The Italian Government announced its measure hours after this Thursday began again with chaos and confusion after the reception, according to the data available at midday, in at least 1,803 schools and institutes throughout the country, for the second consecutive day, of an email that warned of the placement of a bomb. At six in the afternoon the final balance has risen to 3,778 affected centers, but the Government's call seems to have worked: only 77 buildings were evacuated and classes resumed in 36 throughout the morning.
The email was again signed by someone calling himself Mikhail Andropov. This time the message came from the email account of a science teacher in the Philippines that had been hacked. On Wednesday, the email was sent from another sender, also impersonated, from a university in Taiwan, and reached 6,300 centers. It was a false alarm, but hundreds of schools were evacuated in a day of great turmoil that the Italian Government has framed as another episode of hybrid war, following bomb threats on flights leaving or arriving in Italy and computer attacks on refrigerators in supermarkets.
In any case, several debates have been generated: whether or not a message of this type should be heeded, whether a coordinated system should be established for these situations, whether Italy has technological resources to tackle these emails. The opposition, which is demanding more investment from the Government in cybersecurity, has already noted that the same threat reached hundreds of schools in Ireland and Scotland on Wednesday, but it was quickly considered false and there were hardly any evictions.
Meloni called an emergency security meeting yesterday and this Thursday he met with opposition leaders, something that has not happened since 2023, to inform them and maintain a common front in the face of the emergency. This afternoon another technical meeting of the Interministerial Committee for the Security of the Republic (CISR) was held to establish a “common operation for the management of alarm signals,” as explained by the Government.
The absence of clear instructions for everyone on how to act was evident on Wednesday, because each center reacted as it saw fit. In Rome and its province alone, more than 700 schools and institutes were evacuated, unleashing chaos in the city, with thousands of parents leaving their workplaces and going to look for their children.
“Almost comical”
On Wednesday there were already center directors who assumed responsibility for not evacuating students. In Milan, Massimo Nunzio Barrella, from the Parini institute, explained to the media bluntly that the email received from the beginning seemed false and “almost comical”. “It sounded like something out of a 1970s science fiction movie: 'We've come to annihilate you.'” In addition, he saw that on the list of recipients there were dozens of addresses from other centers. He decided not to raise the alarm or evacuate the students, although he called the police to reassure himself and they agreed with him.
Anna Bertato, from another Milanese center on Via Maniago, did the same: "I looked up the sender's address on Google and it already appeared as spam. Even so, I called the police and they shared my opinion." But they were minority cases and in hundreds of centers throughout Italy, those in charge preferred not to take risks. This Thursday the students of the Malpighi Institute in Rome demonstrated to protest against the director of their center, who did not make them vacate after receiving the threat.
The vice president of the Italian Government and Minister of Foreign Affairs, Antonio Tajani, appeared this Thursday in Parliament and assured that Italy is a target of hybrid war due to its position of aid to Ukraine. "For our support in defense of the freedom of a sovereign State, victim of a war of aggression and in favor of democracy. It is evident that the objective is to intimidate us," he declared. Tajani has stated that, as in other attacks recorded in Europe, the aim is to “paralyze essential services, destabilize institutions, hit citizens and companies.”
