Since Tuesday, Munich has also been affected by the nationwide series of Hamas-related bomb threats at schools. According to the police, five mostly secondary schools in the city received identical letters by email in a mishmash of German and Arabic on Monday evening and Tuesday night. Among those affected were the Asam-Gymnasium in Giesing, where a fire alarm accidentally went off, which is why the building was evacuated. At the Albert Einstein High School in Harlaching, classes ended early at 11:20 a.m.
“It looks like an email with the same name was copied and sent out to hundreds of places in Germany,” said a police spokesman. The threats in Munich were no different from the others. All state criminal investigation offices in the country are involved in this. The spokesman was unable to say exactly which other schools had been affected and how many had been evacuated. However, no serious danger is known so far.
The background to the threats is currently unclear; according to the police, the author(s) tried to make a connection to Hamas and the war in the Middle East. The police are now investigating.
Other schools in Bavaria have also received entries in the past few days. The series continued on Tuesday: According to the police, threatening emails were received in Bayreuth, Hollfeld in Upper Franconia, Straubing, Friedberg in Swabia and Neumarkt in Upper Palatinate. According to the police, the author of the threatening letters in Upper Franconia also tried to “establish a connection to Hamas”; In Neumarkt there were references to the Ukraine conflict. There were also major police operations at schools in Erfurt, Solingen, Mönchengladbach, Mannheim and Karlsruhe as well as at ZDF in Mainz on Monday following threats.