By Padraic Halpin
DUBLIN/LONDON, Nov 6 (Reuters) - Bomb threats warning “the clock is ticking” were sent to TV stations across Europe on Friday, prompting evacuations and programming to be suspended.
Warnings were sent to Irish broadcaster RTE, Britain’s Sky, Bulgarian private station Nova TV and others, the companies said. No bombs were found at any affected site. RTE programmes were replaced by music and a pre-recorded message, some for as long as three hours.
The alerts follow a string of hoax bomb threats that has disrupted passenger flights from Serbia to Finland to Spain and beyond in recent days, forcing diversions, emergency landings and security sweeps, though no explosives have been found so far.
They also come amid a growing sense of unease about hacking scams in recent weeks, including cyberattacks on supermarkets.
“We want the whole world to know about us, which is why one of our operatives has planted an explosive device in your building,” read one email received by Nova and RTE on Friday. “It will detonate in 45 minutes. The clock is ticking.”
EMAILS TITLED ‘MESSAGE TO THE WEST’
It is unclear who was behind Friday’s hoaxes.
The emails to RTE and Nova were signed off with the name Mikhail Andropov, with a message saying the author was one of the leaders of a group responsible for this week’s plane hoaxes.
“But this is only the beginning. What happened this week is just a small part of what awaits Europe in the near future,” the message added.
The purported author shared a surname with Yuri Andropov, a former General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The title of the email “MESSAGE TO THE WEST,” echoed the title of a biography of Andropov called “New Challenge to the West”.
It was unclear if this was a sign of Russian involvement, or an attempt to point the finger at Moscow.
Police came to the Nova newsroom in Sofia, which was evacuated, checked and deemed safe. Broadcasting was not interrupted and employees returned to their desks, broadcasters said.
Staff returned to RTE’s campus after police completed a more than three-hour sweep of the buildings.
Irish Prime Minister Micheal Martin said security agencies in Europe had not yet determined whether the threats to air travel and media organisations were being made by individuals or as part of a coordinated attack.
“It just illustrates how relatively simple it can be to cause disruption and to undermine the normal operation of society through unconventional activities of this kind, which are designed to cause disruption, designed to cause fear and anxiety,” Martin told RTE radio shortly after news programming went back on air from an outside broadcasting unit.
“We have to remain calm,” he added.
(Reporting by Gosia Wojtunik, William James, Sarah Young and Padraic Halpin; Writing by Angeliki Koutantou; Editing by Edward McAllister and Andrew Heavens)
