Students of at least 30 schools near Paris opened their emails to discover ‘shocking footage’ of beheadings alongside threatening messages, France’s education ministry said today.
The establishments – mainly secondary schools – have received ‘serious threats’ containing ‘justification of and incitement to terrorism,’ a representative said.
The messages are believed to have entered through the ENT digital platform that serves as a link between teachers, pupils and parents, and came after perpetrators ‘hacked a student’s email address’, the source said.
Meanwhile, a secondary school in the department of Seine-et-Marne to the east of the French capital received a message saying that explosives had been hidden throughout the establishment ‘in the name of Allah’, a police source said.
At least five other high schools in the department of Yvelines in the west of the Greater Paris region also received bomb threats between today and yesterday.
FILE PHOTO: French police and French gendarmes patrol at the Trocadero square near the Eiffel Tower in Paris on March 4
France’s Prime Minister Gabriel Attal is now set to chair a meeting on school security later today
Investigators were working to ‘identify the perpetrators’, the education ministry said, adding that psychological support had been offered to children or adults who had watched the ‘shocking videos’.
France’s Prime Minister Gabriel Attal is set to chair a meeting on school security later today.
The latest threats follow a flurry of false bomb alerts that targeted schools, airport and tourist sites in autumn 2023, alongside several extremist attacks.
In October, a radicalised Islamist stabbed a teacher to death in the northern town of Arras.
Dominique Bernard, 57, was murdered by 20-year-old Chechen refugee Mohamed Mogouchkov at Gambetta high school.
The father-of-three had tried to reason with Mogouchkov when he stormed into the school playground with two knives.
But Mogouchkov went on the rampage, killing Bernard and then severely wounding two other adult members of staff.
This handout photo released by an anonymous source on October 13, 2023, shows the perpetrator of a knife attack being escorted by a policeman outside of the Gambetta high school in the town of Arras, northern France
Dominique Bernard, 57, was murdered by 20-year-old Chechen refugee Mohamed Mogouchkov at Gambetta high school
History and geography teacher Samuel Paty, 47, was decapitated outside a school near Paris
‘This school was struck by the barbarity of Islamist terrorism,’ French President Emmanuel Macron said after visiting the school.
‘The teacher who was killed had come forward to protect others and without doubt saved many lives.’
Then in December, a French court convicted six teenagers for their role in the 2020 beheading of Samuel Paty outside his secondary school near Paris, after they helped to identify him to a radicalised Islamist.
Paty, a 47-year-old history and geography teacher, was stabbed and beheaded in the Paris suburb of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine in October 2020, just 12 miles from Issou, after being tracked down by an Islamic extremist who saw his name online.
Paty had shown his class cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed from the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo during a discussion about free speech.