Educational institutions in Northern France received messages threatening attacks on them on Friday evening and Saturday morning, as reported by the French news agency AFP, citing police and administrative sources. The message viewed by the agency, sent to the parents of students at a school in Lille, stated, "On Monday, 122 institutions will explode." The message also threatened to attack the CNews television channel owned by billionaire Vincent Bolloré.
In the neighboring Amiens Academy, "accounts of the digital workspaces of several institutions were hacked last night," according to the academy's administration to AFP, which could not determine the number of institutions affected. Similar to the message directed at the school in Lille, the message received by institutions in the Amiens Academy "clearly indicates that a number of institutions" will be targeted, the administration added, stating that "the threat appears to pertain to multiple departments" and academies.
A police source told AFP that "several reports" had been submitted via the Pharos platform, which allows for reporting illegal content online. About fifty institutions in the Paris region, mostly high schools, received similar threatening messages in their digital workspaces on Wednesday and Thursday, accompanied by a video showing a beheading.
French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal stated on Thursday evening after a ministerial meeting discussing the security of educational institutions: "They think they will remain anonymous, but we are tracking them. They think they are safe, but we punish them." He added, "Dozens of those who made these threats in recent months have already been brought to justice." The government recorded 800 false bomb alerts in mid-November.
