Educational institutions across Estonia receive bomb threat letters

Hundreds of institutions, public bodies and businesses have been hit by a late-night wave of emails in Estonia which contained error-ridden Russian-language text about a bomb threat.

The police say the emails are spam rather than a clear threat. The threatening emails were received by schools and kindergartens, ERR reports.

Police and Border Guard Board (PPA) spokesperson Heigo Reinek said: "A similar wave of bomb threats hit Latvia a few days ago. The PPA's current assessment is that this mass wave of spam emails aimed at disrupting the recipient institutions' work. The PPA is communicating with those institutions who have received these emails, and are working to find out their origin."

ERR obtained a copy of the email sent at 2.28 a.m. on October 12, to hundreds of email addresses, with recipients including local governments, Tallinn Airport and other transport hubs, sports clubs and museums, as well as schools.

Latvia has already been subject to the same pattern of mass threatening emails, public broadcaster LSM reports.

While the phenomenon is not new, Latvia's State Police Chief Armands Ruks says, this particular culprit has targeted the US and Poland, though the actual threat risk level remains low, he said.

One new aspect is the targeting of schools and kindergartens, he said; this is likely aimed at sowing discord and panic, while the culprit or culprits seem to be comparatively IT-literate even as they may not be fully Russian-language literate.

In fact, Ruks said, this type of attack is not easy and quick to detect, though Latvia's police, Europol and other agencies have the IT tools to do so.

An active investigation and criminal proceedings are underway, LSM reports.