A new wave of hoax bomb threats forced flight diversions across Europe on Friday and expanded to target newsrooms, including Sky and RTE, in what authorities suspect may be a coordinated campaign of disruption.
Sky said it was among several newsrooms to receive a threat. “We have carried out a security assessment and reported the matter to the relevant authorities,” a spokesperson said. Bulgaria’s Nova TV and Irish public broadcaster RTE received emailed threats from a purported “Mikhail Andropov,” headlined “Message to the West,” portraying them as a prelude to more disruptions. RTE evacuated staff in Dublin after the email arrived Friday morning; presenter David McCullagh said it warned a bomb would explode within 45 minutes. The Irish government said threats were also sent to Virgin Media, Newstalk radio and The Irish Independent; it was unclear who was behind them. It said the threats seemed likely to be “a coordinated campaign of disruption.”
The incidents followed Thursday’s hoax bomb threats, which disrupted more than two dozen flights across Europe, and came days after other aircraft and a cruise ship received bomb alerts. On Friday, Hungarian Defence Minister Romulusz Ruszin-Szendi said jets escorted airliners from Brussels to Sofia and from Prague to Bucharest and Cyprus through Hungarian airspace. He said NATO had ordered an air patrol near the Hungarian-Romanian border. Danish police said threats were directed at traffic at Copenhagen airport but there appeared to be no danger to passengers; the airport said it was operating normally. Czech police registered threats to nine flights departing from or arriving in Prague, with no cancellations reported. France said four threats were made to aircraft over its territory, and all landed safely. A Ryanair flight from Rome landed as scheduled in Lisbon, while a WizzAir flight from Prague to Rome was diverted to Venice.
About half a dozen flights were disrupted Tuesday and more than two dozen Thursday, some making unplanned landings or being escorted by fighter jets. Eurocontrol said it was monitoring the situation and working with airlines, airports and navigation providers “to mitigate any disruption to air traffic flows.”
Al Jazeera’s Frances Read, reporting from London, said that while the threats have not been credible so far, disruptions appear to be widening. “The number of hoax threats this week is making governments sit up and take notice about where this might be coming from and also think of solutions for how to deal with it,” she said.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said it was unclear whether the hoax threats were connected to cyberattacks that targeted supermarkets across Europe and France’s national blood service by raising the temperature of internet-connected refrigerators and freezers. “But they definitely all tell us the same thing: today, what is under attack are civilian infrastructures,” she told reporters. Spanish Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares called the aircraft threats an “attempt at hybrid aggression and psychological warfare” and an attack on European democracy by autocratic forces. “It is clear that this is no coincidence,” he told RTVE.
Original Source: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/11/6/new-bomb-threats-target-european-broadcasters-air-traffic
Category:
Tags:
Publish Date: 2026-11-07 00:23:00
