Another school in Bavaria received an email with a bomb threat on Tuesday – this time in Coburg. The day before, the district office in Aschaffenburg was evacuated due to a threatening email. Such cases have increased throughout the Free State in recent weeks. In total, the police have been aware of 59 bomb threats in Bavaria since October 19th, as the Interior Ministry announced in response to an SZ request on Thursday.
Schools in particular were affected: At the end of October, schools in Bayreuth and Hollfeld in Upper Franconia, in Straubing, Munich and in Friedberg in Swabia, among others, received threats. Police headquarters also reported cases in Augsburg and Neumarkt in Upper Palatinate. According to the Ministry of the Interior, apart from a focus in the state capital, there have so far been no other clear regional priorities.
If an institution receives a threatening email, in most cases the building will be evacuated or students and teachers will be turned away before entering the building. The police refrained from evicting the Munich schools. According to the officials there, the threats were not to be taken seriously. Once a school is evacuated, it is searched. The emergency services are supported by explosives dogs. Initially, nothing was found in any of the cases and a real threat was identified. According to the police, some of the threatening letters had a “Hamas connection”, as was the case on Monday in Coburg. In some cases, such as in Neumarkt in der Oberpfalz, references to the war in Ukraine could be made.
According to the Ministry of Culture, in the past threats, the existing security concepts at the schools always worked and the coordination between school management and the police worked well. There was some uncertainty and significant effects on the processes at the schools, but the situation was always controlled and not panicked. “There is generally no increased tension in our schools due to possible bomb threats,” is how the ministry assesses the current mood at schools in the Free State.
The individual police departments and headquarters are responsible for the investigation, said a spokeswoman for the Bavarian State Criminal Police Office. “But of course they talk to each other.” The police in Upper Franconia have been investigating since the comprehensive school in Hollfeld received a threat at the end of October. The high number of incidents in the past few weeks naturally raises the suspicion that there is a connection, said a spokesman for the police headquarters in Upper Franconia. “But it’s not 100 percent certain.” Each individual case must be considered individually during the investigation.
Swatting is the malicious triggering of a large stake
The Interior Ministry says that as things stand, the bomb threats in the Free State can be traced back to different broadcast addresses. The motives are also different. In connection with bomb threats, the background is, for example, “swatting” – the malicious triggering of a large-scale operation -, free riders or political motives. According to the Interior Ministry, the State Criminal Police Office is involved in the investigation and is in close contact with the Federal Criminal Police Office in order to bring together nationwide series in an exchange of information.
It’s not just the Free State that is affected by the bomb threats: facilities in other federal states have also received threats in recent weeks. On Monday, for example, a school in Dorsten (North Rhine-Westphalia) was also evacuated. At the end of October there were, among other things, threats at the town hall in Erfurt and at schools in Mannheim, Solingen and Mönchengladbach. The SWR and ZDF in Mainz also had to be searched by the police after bomb threats. As in the Free State, no real threat was identified there either.