Several Russian cities targeted by mystery bomb threats

For four days running, towns and cities across Russia have been hit by a wave of bomb alerts.

Dozens of schools, shopping centres, railway stations and public buildings have been evacuated. Tens of thousands of people have been affected.

So far, all of the alerts have proved to be hoaxes and the public has been urged to remain calm.

The source of the threats is unclear but one official suggested they had originated outside Russia.

“There’s reason to assume this was all organised abroad,” the official in Chelyabinsk told Interfax news agency.

On Wednesday, the bomb scares spread to Moscow, prompting the evacuation of the luxury GUM shopping centre near the Kremlin. In the capital alone, more than 50,000 people were caught up in the alerts, reports said.

Pro-Kremlin newspapers have pointed to a “major hacking attack”, possibly from Ukraine. State TV said 205 companies and organisations had been targeted nationally.

Other reports suggested the threats were made via scrambled internet connections and were difficult to source. One official was quoted as saying the evacuations were part of an anti-terrorist drill but that has not been confirmed.

No-one is certain but the alerts appear to have come in the form of a pre-recorded voice message via internet telephony. One message received in the city of Ufa was broadcast on national TV.

“An explosive device has been placed in the building. Evacuate the people, call the bomb squads. This is not a drill. Do you understand me?”

A security source told pro-Kremlin tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda that the hoaxes were the result of a cyber attack organised from Ukraine, although no evidence was given. An IT security specialist quoted elsewhere spoke only of a foreign hacking attack.

The governor of Stavropol called it a “phone attack” that had come from abroad and one phone company spoke of an “international virtual operator”.

Source: BBC