Calais train station bomb threat sparks Eurostar delays

A bomb alert is under way at the Calais-Frethun train station in northern France, local authorities said on Thursday. The bomb alert is also affecting international train travel, including the Eurostar.The alert may have an impact on rail traffic, the Pas-de-Calais prefecture said on social media platform X.International high-speed rail service Eurostar said some of its trains between London and Paris were being affected.'At the request of the French authorities, trains are currently unable to pass through Calais-Fréthun station. This is causing delays to some services to and from London', the company said in a statement.Yesterday, schools were evacuated across Italy on Wednesday following a series of hoax bomb threats.Similar hoax threats were reported in schools in Britain and Ireland, which prompted some evacuations.Italian PM Giorgia Meloni said she had called a government meeting for Wednesday, with Italian media reporting that 312 schools had received threats. A Eurostar train is seen waiting to cross from the Channel to England, at the Calais-Frethun train station (File picture)'At present, based on the checks carried out, no element has emerged that would suggest there is a concrete danger,' she said on Facebook.'The reports instead appear to be linked to a strategy aimed at generating alarm and concern, which is currently the subject of all the necessary in-depth investigations,' Meloni said.The threats come after a series of hoax bomb alerts in recent weeks including on flights across Europe and cyber attacks on supermarket refrigeration systems in several European countries.On Friday, flights to and from Britain were targeted for the third time that week.And newsrooms including Sky News, the Irish national broadcaster RTE and Bulgarian media station Nova TV were also targeted with threats.An email sent to RTE warned that last week's chaos was 'only the beginning' and that 'the clock is ticking'.Last Thursday, emails sent to airports in Rome and Sofia were signed by 'the fighters of the Male State', a Russian radical misogynist movement, but on Friday its founder denied the group had any links to the hoax bomb threats. Friday's disruption hit at least nine flights arriving at and leaving Prague Airport.'The threats concern incoming flights from Denmark, Spain and Great Britain. As for outgoing flights, it's flights to the Netherlands, Cyprus, Romania, Italy and Great Britain,' said spokeswoman Denisa Hejtmankova.Alerts were also received for two flights to Sofia on Friday – one coming in from Stansted Airport in Britain and from Brussels.A bomb threat was also reported on a Ryanair flight from Rome that landed in Lisbon, and the French prime minister's office confirmed that four aircraft flying over France were targeted with bomb threats.Hungarian jets escorted three civilian flights subject to bomb threats while they were in Hungarian airspace on Friday, Hungarian defence minister Romulusz Ruszin-Szendi said on social media.He said the jets escorted an Airbus A321 travelling from Brussels to Sofia as well as flights from Prague to Cyprus and to Bucharest. Cyber attackers hacked hundreds of supermarkets across France and defrosted their freezers last month Some European officials suspect Russia may be behind a campaign of disruption to everyday life in European nations supporting Ukraine after Moscow's invasion.Russia denies that and accuses the West of ​a smear campaign. Meanwhile, Iran is another ​suspect. France summoned Iran's ambassador on ⁠Tuesday after accusing Tehran of a cyberattack that disabled refrigerators in hundreds of supermarkets last month.The hacks that struck hundreds of supermarkets in October were among the most disruptive cyberattacks since the Iran war began this February.These have included hacks against the Los Angeles transit system in March, US water treatment plants in July and ships bound for the US in August.The October 11 cyber-attack, which overrode the temperature controls on commercial fridges in hundreds of establishments, appeared to have ​been easy to pull off, cyber-security experts previously told Reuters.The firm behind many of the stricken units said that several were obsolete or were running outdated firmware, which could have made it easy for hackers to break in.The effects were still dramatic. Some refrigerators had the temperature turned up so high they caught fire.The Paris prosecutor's office said the cyber-attack showed a methodology characteristic of the 'Shahid Kaveh Group', an elite offensive cyber unit believed to work in the service of the IRGC.It has requested international arrest warrants against the leader of the group, as well as his two deputies.Iran rejected those accusations as 'baseless and hostile'.This is a breaking news story. More to follow.