Photo: Bene RiobĂł / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0
By: JBizNews Desk 🌎
Update, Friday, Nov. 6: Bomb threats targeted passenger flights across Europe for a third time this week Friday, with new alerts in Denmark, the Czech Republic, France, Portugal and Italy. Spanish Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares said Europe appeared to be facing “hybrid aggression and a form of psychological warfare.”
Danish police said they were investigating threats directed at air traffic at Copenhagen airport and that their immediate assessment was that there had been no danger to passengers; the airport said it was operating normally. Czech police said they had registered bomb threats against four inbound and five outbound Prague flights, with no explosive devices found and no flights canceled or diverted. The French prime minister’s office reported four new alerts Friday morning concerning “planes flying over French territory,” saying all the aircraft landed safely and that an investigation was under way to determine the source of the alerts. A Ryanair flight from Rome to Lisbon landed at Lisbon’s Humberto Delgado Airport shortly before 8 a.m. local time after an anonymous phone call to Rome’s Fiumicino control tower warned of a possible explosive device, prompting a security operation. A Wizz Air flight from Prague to Rome was diverted to Venice, where it landed safely.
“It cannot be mere coincidence that so many incidents with exactly the same modus operandi are happening across Europe,” Albares told national broadcaster TVE. “The most reasonable assumption is that we are facing an attempt at hybrid aggression and a form of psychological warfare,” he said, adding that determining exactly what happened would take time and that Europe must be prepared for more such challenges. No country has attributed blame for the threats. They follow a wave of sabotage attacks and attempts on targets across Europe, from German electricity substations and defense-related facilities in the Baltic region to supermarket refrigeration in France and Leipzig airport in Germany. Many officials have linked that campaign to Europe’s support for Ukraine in its war against Russian invasion, accusing Moscow of “hybrid” disruptions that are cheap to execute and easily deniable.
Friday’s incidents follow Thursday’s wave, which affected at least 25 flights and is detailed below, and an initial round of threats on Tuesday. No explosive devices have been found in any of this week’s alerts.
An Aer Lingus passenger plane carrying 157 people from Dublin to Rome made an emergency landing at a French military air base Thursday after a bomb threat, one of multiple flights across Europe affected by threats that authorities say so far appear unfounded.
Flight EI402 “diverted to Normandy this morning as a security precaution,” the Irish airline said, confirming the Airbus A320 landed safely. The office of French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu said the 151 passengers and six crew were moved to a safe place and a bomb squad was in place at the Évreux-Fauville Air and Space Force base.
Tracking site FlightRadar24 showed the jet cruising normally at 37,000 feet just west of Paris about an hour into the flight, then descending in a series of loops before landing at Évreux.
Dozens of flights were affected across Europe Thursday, but the published counts differed: AFP reported about 20 affected flights, the Guardian reported at least 25, and CNBC cited Reuters for at least 27. These are separate accounts, not numbers to add together. Three flights diverted, all the aircraft landed safely and no explosives were found. Most of the targeted flights reached their original destinations.
AFP reported that French officials alleged the Aer Lingus pilot had initially preferred a civilian airport rather than the military base. Aer Lingus told AFP Thursday evening that the airline and its pilots “fully cooperated with the French authorities regarding this matter.” The allegation is not a finding of wrongdoing.
Aer Lingus, Finnair, Wizz Air and LOT confirmed affected services had been cleared following security checks. A Wizz Air Milan-to-Warsaw flight diverted to Vienna, while its Milan-to-Bucharest service landed safely at its destination. A Ryanair London-to-Sofia flight diverted to Plovdiv; the AFP report does not say all three threatened Sofia-bound Ryanair flights diverted there.
No explosives had been found during the searches. Aeroporti di Roma, which manages Rome’s airports, confirmed to the BBC that an email threatening two inbound flights was signed on behalf of a group or individual calling themselves “Fighters of the Male State.” The Guardian reported that threats emailed to Rome and Sofia carried that signature and described Male State as a Russian far-right, ultranationalist and misogynistic movement. Vladislav Pozdnyakov, the Russian blogger who founded Male State in 2016, said the group was later banned in Russia, no longer existed and was not involved in any way; there was no immediate indication of who was behind the threats across Europe. The signature is a claim, not independent proof of who sent the threats or of Russian state involvement; the Guardian reported that investigators had no evidence establishing a hostile state or terror group was orchestrating the hoaxes.
AFP could not confirm a link between the threats and the Russian far-right movement called Male State. EU transport commissioner Apostolos Tzitzikostas said it was “too early to draw conclusions on whether the reported incidents are linked,” according to AFP and CNBC. The claimed signature is not proof of the sender’s identity, of coordination among every incident or of Russian state involvement. Investigations were continuing.
JBizNews Desk | London
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