Police probe links between last month's school bomb hoax and new threats: PSNI joins with Scotland's force for investigation
The PSNI is probing connections between today’s hoax bomb threats to schools and one that sparked mass evacuations last month.
And they’re working with police in Scotland to do it, after that schools in that country as well as the Republic of Ireland and Italy were all hit by messages reportedly similar to those sent across Ulster.
Around 470 schools got new hoax bomb warnings in Scotland, while police in the Republic confirmed what they described as a “generic communication” was sent to a number of educational establishments.
Authorities in both countries were quick to dismiss the messages as not credible, but some schools in Scotland and the Republic are known to have evacuated this morning after the threat arrived.
Reports have come in of schools in Edinburgh, Fife, the Highlands and Dumfries and Galloway closing for a brief time, as did establishments in counties Cork, Dublin and Wicklow.
Schools across Italy shut after around 6,300 of them received bomb warnings, Reuters reported, though the country’s prime minister maintained the threats didn’t pose a danger to the public.
As with Northern Ireland, Scotland was also hit by last month’s hoax threats. A PSNI spokeswoman told the News Letter the force is joining with law enforcement in Scotland and the National Crime Agency to investigate possible connections between the false warnings.
“Officers and detectives are carrying out extensive enquiries to establish the source of these mass-distributed emails and any potential links to previous emails,” she said.
“The working theory is that these hoax and malicious emails were sent from outside the UK. Enquiries are continuing on other aspects of the investigation.”