Slovakia hit by wave of bomb threats

Police in Slovakia are trying to find out who sent more than 1,000 bomb threats to schools and other institutions on Tuesday.

Police teams with sniffer dogs and bomb disposal experts were called out repeatedly across the country.

The alerts prompted mass evacuations.

Officials said they were treating the threats "as a particularly serious crime of terrorist attack".

Emails from an anonymous sender reportedly began arriving at 05:00, alleging that explosives were stored in hundreds of schools spanning the country's eight regions.

The number of confirmed threats issued has reportedly been growing.

Officials have not specified what is in the threats. But according to TV reports, they were written in Slovak, sent from a Russian email address and targeted what the author described as enemies of Islam.

Classes were suspended as specialist teams investigated the alerts. The vast majority were sent to schools, but Slovakia's national police announced on social media that at least 110 banks and 40 electrical stores also received the bomb threats.

Police say they are working intensively, co-operating with security services to identify those behind the threats.

Authorities said the threats had caused psychological stress across the country, adding that the disruption to educational services could have "far-reaching consequences".

It comes after similar emails were reportedly sent to more than 120 schools in the Bratislava region last week, according to police.

If caught, the perpetrator faces life imprisonment.

The incidents come at a time of heightened tensions over the war in neighbouring Ukraine.

In April, Slovakia's newly elected populist-nationalist leader, Robert Fico, pledged not to send "one more round of ammunition" to Ukraine.

For months, Ukrainian forces have struggled to defend their front lines from the Russian advance because of a shortage of shells, rockets and air defences.

But Mr Fico has refused to join about 20 countries that have signed up to a Czech-led operation to procure large quantities of artillery ammunition on the global arms market.