MADRID (Reuters) – Several foreign schools in Spain were monitored by police with sniffer dogs, while others opened on Monday after receiving bomb threats via email that the Interior Ministry called a hoax.
A police source in Zaragoza indicated that 4 foreign schools in the city had received threats and that the French Molière college had not opened its doors on Monday. At least three other British schools in Madrid told Reuters they had received threats last week or on Monday.
At least two foreign schools in Tenerife, a top-tier French school and a German school, also won the risk and opened their doors on Monday, the regional government confirmed.
The newspaper El Mundo said a total of 18 in Pontevedra, Tenerife, Zaragoza, Reus, Tarragona, Villareal and Castellón had received threats by email.
“Regarding the wave of threats, complaints are being taken and the investigation is being centralised. They are false threats,” the Interior Ministry said in a statement.
The email specified some explanation for the reason for the threat, a school source told Reuters.
A source at another school said the very short email had referenced explosives planted in the establishment, without attributing responsibility to any group or giving any reason for the activity.
Madrid’s Montessori English school, owned by U. K. -based educational organization Cognita, also received a threat, but police said they did not want to evacuate the school, its principal said in an email to parents.
A spokesman for St George’s British School in Madrid told Reuters they had received an email and that early this morning police, accompanied by sniffer dogs, checked the building before allowing pupils to open.
(Reporting by Emma Pinedo, Corina Pons, Charlie Devereux, Aislinn Laing and Belen Carreno; editing by Leslie Adler)
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