Germany has suffered numerous bomb threats over the past few days aimed at schools, media organisations, political parties and other institutions.
It comes after a similar spate of threats recently saw several airports across France repeatedly evacuated, with German ministers speculating that they may be linked to Islamist terror.
According to reports in local German media, news outlets SWR, RTL and ARD-aktuell have all been targeted by bomb threats, with train stations and even the headquarters of Germany’s ruling Social Democratic Party (SPD) also said to have been affected.
Schools in the states of Bavaria, North Rhine-Westphalia, Thuringia and Saxony have also been hit with short, generic messages threatening such attacks, many of which were said to have been written in languages other than German.
“Hello, we are pleased to announce that your building is being bombed in the name of Hamas, we have explosives worth more than € 20 million,” read one of the threatening emails, which was written in English and Arabic.
“We are armed with automatic rifles, so don’t even try to stop us. Allah is the greatest,” it continued, adding that it was “100 per cent certain that people will die”.
Authorities have so far found no actual evidence the threats made are real.
More than a dozen French airports have been hit with bomb threats for the third day in a row, media in the country is reporting. https://t.co/SZx2dFJHi2
— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) October 20, 2023
Speaking on the subject, Germany’s federal commissioner for anti-Semitism Felix Klein, noted that authorities were looking into whether the warnings were actually associated with Hamas.
“I condemn the nationwide bomb threats as a despicable attempt at intimidation that is directed against our free society,” he said.
“The investigators are still examining a connection to the radical Islamist terrorist group Hamas,” Klein added.
“If this suspicion is confirmed, it will once again show that anti-Semitism attacks our society as a whole and that its destructive power is directed primarily, but by no means exclusively, against Jews.”
He went on to say that the Hamas attack on Israel had revealed how high the level of danger Islamic radicalism poses to Jews now is.
“The clear threat that the Jewish community has been exposed to even more than usual since October 7 is not imagination,” he said.
“Those who have not yet taken the threat posed by the terrorist group seriously should also rethink.”
At least 12 airports around France and Belgium have been hit by bomb scares, authorities have confirmed. https://t.co/8F8SAc0Ujd
— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) October 18, 2023
