‘Phone threat’ has Sydney schools on alert

Eight schools across the United Kingdom on Monday received bomb attack threats, including one attended by Pakistani teenage activist and Nobel Laureate Malala Yousafzai, prompting authorities to launch a probe.

“Each school is taking precautionary measures to ensure the safety of its students and no students are in danger”, the department said, in a statement, according to ABC News.

Monday’s operations come after seven schools in Sydney and the Illawarra region went into lockdown for several hours following threats made on Friday morning.

Hundreds of pupils were evacuated from the Royal High School and Tynecastle High School in Edinburgh after staff received phone threats around 10.30am.

The spokeswoman said the threats were “very low level” and said there was “nothing at all” to suggest the threats were related to terrorism.

The story Police operations at Sydney schools after threats first appeared on The Sydney Morning Herald.

A large police operation across nine Sydney schools has ended.

Staff and police searched both schools and nothing suspicious was found.

An eyewitness saw three police cars pull up at The High School of Glasgow with “sirens blazing” and six officers run into the school.

The threats to the French and British schools were claimed by a Twitter account calling itself the Evacuation Squad, with a profile picture of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“We have only targeted schools in Europe, Canada, The United States, South Africa, and Japan”, Fairfax reported the email as saying, citing the user name Viktor Olyavich. “It is most likely a “copycat” incident”.

Police said investigations are continuing and they are liaising with the Department of Education.

‘At this stage, police are treating these incidents as malicious calls’.