On Wednesday, the Interior Ministry announced the deployment of 2,050 police officers to patrol schools. Deputy Interior Minister Lucia Kurilovská announced during a press conference that “each school will have its own police officer.”
The wave of bomb threats, delivered via email and phone, targeted hundreds of schools, banks, and electronics stores across Slovakia.
By 3:00 PM on Tuesday, a total of 1,323 bomb threats were reported in schools, with 110 in banks (VÚB) and 40 in electronics shops (Nay). In all, the police documented 1,543 bomb threats, a figure they described as “staggering.”
The email threats, written in Slovak, reportedly praised Islam with the ominous message “We're in your country now,” as quoted by TV Markíza.
The National Crime Agency (NAKA) has taken charge of the investigation and is pursuing the unknown perpetrator for terrorism, which carries a sentence of 20–25 years in prison or even life imprisonment.
Education Minister Tomáš Drucker condemned the threats, stating, “It is depraved to threaten schools with bombs, even in jest.”
The incidents echo similar threats in the past, with over 120 schools in the
Bratislava Region receiving comparable emails just last Friday, referencing
Allah, Sharia law, and explosives in trucks. Both emails are suspected to have originated from a
Russian email address ending in ‘.ru’.
Despite the apparent escalation in such incidents, the Interior Ministry emphasized that every report is taken seriously, particularly in light of previous events in neighboring countries like Lithuania, Estonia, and Poland, where hundreds of schools were targeted with false bomb threats.
Deputy police chief Rastislav Polakovič stated on Wednesday that the evidence suggests the threats were likely part of a cyberattack rather than genuine threats.
Meanwhile, the police have apprehended two individuals in connection with threats made over the phone: a 25-year-old who threatened a court in Bratislava and a 14-year-old who made a threat against a school in Brezno, central Slovakia.
