A new wave of threatening emails, signed "Mikhail Andropov," has reached Italian schools and reignited the bomb alarm. The text of one of the messages claims that the building has been mined and that the lives of those inside are in danger. Investigators have not yet clarified who sent the emails or where they originated, and the investigation remains open.
According to available information, the wave of messages reportedly reached about 1,803 institutes, a figure that is still provisional. The first emails with the same content had already appeared on November 12, prompting several school principals to evacuate buildings, in some cases before official instructions arrived from the ministry. In the following hours, evacuations were reported in Lazio, Sicily, the Catania area, Liguria and Sortino, with the number of children involved estimated at around 15,000 within a single day. The following day a second wave of messages arrived, and in Palermo schools suspended classes.
The government's position, as reported by Palazzo Chigi, is that schools should continue to operate unless the prefectures identify specific reasons to halt their activity. This approach prevents every report from automatically triggering the closure of institutions, a step that in the first hours had produced widespread and uneven interruptions across different areas. In the province of Syracuse, most school principals judged the new emails to be false alarms and chose not to suspend lessons. Lombardy, Campania and Emilia-Romagna also received threatening messages of this kind, without, as far as is known, resulting in evacuations comparable to those in Lazio or Sicily.
On the investigative front, police forces and units specialized in cybersecurity are checking the institutes involved, building by building. So far, no real danger has been confirmed: no device has been found and no threat has been traced to a concrete action. The Digos and the Postal Police are trying to trace the authors, and the hypotheses under consideration include a protest, a prank, or imitation by other individuals who have replicated the same pattern. None of these lines of inquiry has been established, however, and the investigations remain at a preliminary stage.
On the political level, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni held a two-hour meeting with opposition leaders dedicated to cyber threats. The opposition declared its willingness to cooperate on security, without however giving the government unconditional support. Giuseppe Conte and Elly Schlein called for the definition of clear protocols and more precise proposals from the executive, arguing that schools and families need uniform guidance. Requests were also made to strengthen funding for cybersecurity, while Matteo Renzi criticized some of the government's spending choices, arguing that resources should be directed differently.