Scottish schools evacuated after bomb threats also sent in Ireland

About 470 schools across Scotland were targeted with threatening messages on Wednesday, STV News reported. Police Scotland said it was treating the messages as hoaxes and had found nothing to suggest they represented a credible threat.

The force said schools did not need to evacuate or keep children away based solely on the content of the emails. Some schools had already taken precautions: Edinburgh council said schools in the city were briefly evacuated, while STV reported evacuations in areas including Fife and Perth and Kinross.

Police Scotland said its cyber and fraud unit was investigating the source of the messages. Schools in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland also received threats, Reuters reported. Northern Ireland’s Education Authority advised schools to stay open, according to the ANP and AFP news agencies.

In Italy, more than 300 schools were evacuated after bomb alerts. Reuters, which saw a copy of the Italian email, said its purported author claimed responsibility for earlier threats to newsrooms in Ireland and Bulgaria. That claim does not establish who sent the messages or whether the Italian and Scottish school threats were linked.