'We will annihilate you', the bomb threat in 6,000 Italian schools. Meloni: 'Strategy for chaos'

The email was sent a few minutes before 10am and the alarm was immediately triggered in 6,300 Italian schools. "We have come to annihilate you. We will carry out a genocide against the Italians" is the threat contained in the email message signed by Mikhail Antropov, the same name that appeared last week in the claim of false bomb alerts on board dozens of airliners and in the offices of some European television stations. But this time the alarm was much broader. The text of the email announced the presence of a "powerful device" left in the building inside a plastic bag "with remote trigger". And there was also reference to a bomb planted in the engine of the prime minister's car.

A few lines that were enough to create another day of chaos and fear for hundreds of thousands of students and families after that of November 2, when a similar message was delivered to 280 school administrators. In a few moments, from the North to the South of the country, thousands of students found themselves outside of classes, lessons were interrupted, parents were quickly notified to go and collect the little ones. And the police went into action, with the bomb squad to carry out the remediation of the buildings. Inconveniences from which only the institutes in Trentino Alto Adige and Valle d'Aosta were spared, as they have different email addresses and do not pass through the ministry's system. In any case, this time too there were false alarms and tomorrow - the Ministry of Education announced - all schools will be open as normal. However, attention remains high, so much so that Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni called a meeting in the afternoon at Palazzo Chigi to take stock of the situation and coordinate the necessary initiatives with the leaders of the intelligence services and the National Cybersecurity Agency (ACN).

"No concrete danger - government sources have underlined since the morning - just a strategy to generate alarm". And even the Minister of Education Giuseppe Valditara immediately tried to reassure: "No to alarmism, because it is clear from the content of the email that the concrete risk is almost non-existent". Therefore "there is no reason for alarm and tomorrow we will go to school without problems" he reiterated, thanking managers and teachers "for their professionalism and composure". Even the threat addressed to the Prime Minister did not cause alarm since the cars in which personalities such as the Prime Minister travel are kept in barracks or similar structures monitored 24 hours a day. Meanwhile, postal police investigators are working to trace whoever sent the email which started from a compromised profile of the Daye University of Taiwan, a private university on the island. From initial investigations it seems it could be attributable to the account of a former student violated by hackers. A trail that seems to lead towards Moscow although it remains to be clarified whether it is a real clue or, on the contrary, an attempt to direct suspicions to mislead investigators.

Those investigating are also looking for the common thread between the fake alarms of recent weeks which have also targeted scheduled flights across half of Europe and those launched in similar ways in schools. For Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi, who just yesterday met the Committee for Public Order and Security to take stock of the cyber threat, it is "premature to talk about common management". According to Defense Minister Guido Crosetto everything "is part of a strategy that is now clear: that of sowing terror or creating concerns". And he warns: "We will see more and more because, unfortunately, the mother of idiots is always pregnant." Certainly, according to government colleague Luca Ciriani, the episodes "confirm that we are faced with a transversal phenomenon with a predominantly international matrix". Inevitably, the coincidence with the false alarm that arrived by email this morning in over three hundred schools in Northern Ireland also ends up under scrutiny. The message, identical for everyone, was also sent to a thousand institutions in Scotland. This is also the second time in Northern Ireland in a few days, after the alert on 19 October.

"To date there is no element that indicates a concrete danger. These messages are not intended to strike, they serve to scare. Those who write them above all want our fear, the lost days, the suspicion, the chaos. The investigators and the judiciary are working on who is behind them together with their European colleagues. I will not make hypotheses, when there are certainties you will know them". Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni stated this in a video on social media, indicating the three elements that emerged regarding the bomb scares in schools, also following the outcome of the meeting she chaired at Palazzo Chigi with the relevant ministers, intelligence and cybersecurity leaders.

"We will not allow an anonymous email to decide our children's school calendar" underlined the prime minister

"With the honesty that distinguishes me, I must say" that "it is possible that messages like these will still arrive. It will not be a sign that something has not worked, it will be proof that whoever sends them has nothing else and will find us ready. We are working to deploy all the tools we have to minimize the impact of these attacks, each alarm will continue to be verified one by one". he continued

"Today thousands of Italian schools received a message announcing a bomb. In many institutions the children were let out, the police checked classroom by classroom and I'll tell you the most important thing straight away, nothing was found in any school. I know that for many families it was a day of fear or discomfort, I understand it, clearly I don't underestimate it." he concluded

The bomb threat in Italian schools also involved dozens of institutes in all the provinces of Sicily, from Palermo to Catania, from Trapani to Enna, from Syracuse to Ragusa, from Messina to Caltanissetta. The management activated the emergency plan, ensuring that students and staff were evacuated from the classrooms and offices, in some cases also with the support of the firefighters, but no reports of explosive devices were reported. "Around 10.30 or so, word spread that an alarm had gone off. We thought it was an earthquake," said Gaia, a student at the Finocchiaro Aprile high school in Palermo, who is under occupation. "In the meantime, the vice-principal went first to the gym and then to the classrooms to warn the students and teachers. We all went outside and the management explained to us that the principal had received an email reporting the presence of a bomb." Other high schools and institutes in the capital were evacuated, as well as in the province, from Bagheria to Partinico. In Catania the operations began starting at 10am, with students from various institutes accompanied to the collection points. In some schools in the province, the threatening email was read late by the secretariat employees because it ended up in the spam box, triggering the evacuation only at midday, almost two hours after the general sending of the message. The same happened in the province of Caltanissetta, from Gela to Niscemi. In Syracuse, messages on Whatsapp warning the parents of students who have dropped out of school have multiplied. Many young people and student commuters flocked to the streets looking for the first available bus. Traffic, caused by sudden exits, paralyzed the city. The bomb threat via email reached an elementary school on the Aeolian island of Lipari.

(by Stefan Wallisch)

While throughout Italy the bell rang to warn of the alarm and rivers of girls and boys, accompanied by their teachers, left the buildings, in Trentino Alto Adige and Valle d'Aosta the lessons continued without any interruption. Not a single threat has arrived in the two provinces and in the autonomous region. If one wanted to imagine a map of Italy with a red dot for each evacuated institution, Trentino Alto Adige and Valle d'Aosta would represent white spots. How was this possible? Because school email addresses have 'independent' domains, which in fact do not end with @editore.it. Philipp Achammer, the councilor for German language education in the Province of Bolzano, illustrates this theory. Bolzano was spared from the cyber attack, as was Trento, due to the autonomous school system which also involves different email addresses. "Our emails do not pass through the ministry's system - he said - Since neither the German nor the Italian language school in Alto Adige have received threatening emails, this should be the reason". "We are following the situation very carefully. We do not underestimate it at all and we will keep the situation under control", adds the counterpart for the Italian language schools in the Province of Bolzano, Marco Galateo. The education councilor of the Province of Trento, Francesca Gerosa, confirms: "Our state of alert today was maximum, I personally remained in continuous contact with our Education Department and with the police commissioner, and I received no reports throughout the day". In Alto Adige, schools have emails with the domain of the autonomous province, i.e. @provincia.bz.it for the Italian ones and @provinz.bz.it for the German ones. The same system is also applied in nearby Trentino, where the parent who writes to his child's school must type @provincia.tn.it. Even in Aosta you don't type @editore.it, like in the rest of the country, but @mail.scuole.vda.it. In the autonomous region there are a total of 200 schools, which belong to 25 educational institutions. Experts will be the ones to establish the exact flaw that allowed this sensational cyber attack. Trento, Bolzano and Aosta were saved, at least this time.

(by Michela Nana)

Not all students found themselves on the streets after the email with the false bomb threat arrived in their schools. At the Parini classical high school in Milan, one of the best known in the city center where Alessandro Manzoni and Dino Buzzati studied among others, the students continued their lessons as if nothing had happened. The principal of the historic Brera high school, Massimo Nunzio Barrella, did not panic and decided not to evacuate the institute, because when he read the email he immediately understood that there was something strange, "comic" in the text. A choice similar to that of dozens of his colleagues throughout Italy, from Potenza to Lecco, from Terni to Padua. Barella and the other principals called the police and they confirmed that it was a false alarm. hence the decision not to evacuate the school so as not to create unnecessary stress and moments of tension for students, teachers and workers. "The text of this email was almost comical at first, it seemed like a quote from a science fiction film from the 1960s - he explains to ANSA -. However, before making the decision, I contacted the police who reassured me that it was a false alarm". Furthermore, what made the high school principal suspicious was also the address book of the emails "which had been sent to hundreds of users - he says -. Of course, if the email had only reached me, then I would have considered everything more credible and would have evacuated". After discussing what to do with the police, the principal took a tour of the corridors of the institute, "I saw that everything was quiet in the classes, that there was no presence of strangers - he says -, then I went out into the street and walked around the block and I didn't see anything suspicious, no one was panicking, in the school or even outside". Only one family called to find out about the bomb threat and the school director immediately reassured them. Barrella is keen to underline that there was no underestimation of the danger on his part: "I know how the police work and I trusted them, in fact when I called them they already knew it was a false alarm - he underlines -. Then seeing that the whole of Italy and beyond was in the address book, I understood that the objective was to trigger panic, and I would say that they succeeded". According to the principal of Parini, it will not be an isolated case but "we must prepare to face these threats which will be growing - he underlines -. The school is already a very delicate context and I would not want copycats to get involved, because there are many smart kids who know how to enter the systems, more than we think, they are very prepared. It would really be a damage and we must also prepare ourselves to manage this, but without panicking". Of course, "threats shouldn't be taken lightly either - he concludes -, I say that we need to evaluate case by case with the help of the police who are prepared".

There were also hundreds of schools in Piedmont that received an email reporting a bomb threat. In Turin, dozens of reports reached the police and the Carabinieri, who carried out checks in numerous institutions. Thousands of students and teachers were taken out of institutions for a few hours and hundreds of families of minors were contacted to bring their children home. The Berti high school, in the Cit-Turin district, is one of the schools in Turin that were evacuated. The email message arrived around 10am and the procedures were immediately activated. "After so much news in recent days we weren't really worried, but you can never joke about threats like that," said vice-principal Carla Baracco. For the little ones, in some schools in the Turin area, the exercise trick was used, so as not to create panic. It's a test". This was said to the young and very young students of three schools in Giaveno, as reported by the mayor, Stefano Olocco. Among the institutes in the province, those of Rivarolo, Brandizzo and Volpiano were also evacuated. At least four schools in the Verbano-Cusio-Ossola area received an email containing a bomb threat which required the evacuation of students, teachers and staff on duty. These are the Ferrini institute in Verbania, the Spezia high school and of the Marconi-Einaudi-Galletti institute in Domodossola and of the Beltrami school in Omegna between Asti and its province for a series of bomb scares which involved four different comprehensive schools and a total of fifteen structures