School bomb hoaxes add to disruption in Europe after flights

Donato Paolo Mancini, Antonio Vanuzzo and Jennifer Duggan, Bloomberg News on Nov 11, 2026

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Thousands of schools in Europe were targeted by bomb threats, leading to evacuations and adding to the recent disruption across the continent that grounded planes and saw supermarket fridges hacked.

In Italy, 6,000 schools received emailed bomb alerts, according to the Education Ministry, with a sizable number of them sending kids home. Hundreds more in Ireland, Northern Ireland and Scotland got similar warnings. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni chaired an emergency government meeting Wednesday afternoon, officials said.

While the authorities across all three countries said the threats did not appear credible, there’s a widening picture of disorder in Europe with governments trying to figure out the origins and motives. Indeed, the wave of school hoaxes appears to be the latest in a string of coordinated attacks aimed at destabilizing life in the continent.

Last Friday, sporadic bomb threats disrupted multiple flights and media outlets, capping a week that put the aviation industry on alert. Hungary scrambled fighter jets three times in one day because of threats, while in France, there were four bomb threats against aircraft crossing the country’s airspace.

Also in France, the government took the unusual step of blaming Iran’s Revolutionary Guard for recent cyberattacks that crippled fridges and freezers in large grocery stores.

Meloni and her government have blamed pro-Russian hackers for other cyberattacks, including one targeting Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani. On Saturday, Tajani, who also serves as deputy prime minister, said that hackers had published his personal information on the dark web, describing the move as an attempt at intimidation.

After the school bomb threats, Meloni and the Italian intelligence community were set to discuss measures to prevent further disruption, according to an official in her office.

Meanwhile, the police force in Ireland, the Garda Síochána, said it was aware of a communication that was sent to a number of schools but assessed the threat was not credible. It was not advising any schools to evacuate.

The Police Service of Northern Ireland was also investigating threatening emails sent to more than 300 schools in the region, it said in a statement. It was treating the emails, which originated from outside the United Kingdom, as a hoax. In Scotland, school children temporarily vacated buildings before being allowed back into class. The country’s police said it was “carrying out extensive inquiries to establish the source of the messages.”

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(With assistance from Alessandra Migliaccio, Flavia Rotondi and Tiago Ramos Alfaro.)