Newsroom bomb threats follow escalating European flight hoaxes

BUDAPEST/DUBLIN/PRAGUE, Nov 6 (Reuters) - Newsrooms in Ireland and Bulgaria received emailed bomb threats on Friday from a purported "Mikhail Andropov", claiming responsibility for a widening wave of hoax threats disrupting passenger flights across Europe.

The messages, sent to Bulgaria's Nova TV and the Irish public broadcaster RTE, which evacuated its offices, were headlined "Message to the West" and portrayed the threats as the prelude to a series of attacks on means of transport across Europe. The British broadcaster Sky also said it had received a security threat.

Reuters was not able to establish the identity of the sender, the origin of the emails, or whether they had in fact come from the same source as the threats to any or all of the dozens of flights affected since Tuesday. No explosive devices have been found and all planes have landed safely.

SPANISH MINISTER SPEAKS OF 'PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE'

On Thursday, airlines and airports in Italy received threatening emails purporting to be from a banned Russian campaign group, although their origin could not be verified.

Spain's foreign minister said the continent appeared to be facing "hybrid aggression and a form of psychological warfare".

Around half a dozen flights were disrupted in some way on Tuesday and more than two dozen on Thursday, some of them making unplanned landings or being escorted to their destinations by fighter jets.

On Friday, jets escorted airliners flying from Brussels to Sofia and from Prague to Bucharest and Cyprus through Hungarian airspace due to bomb threats, Hungarian Defence Minister Romulusz Ruszin-Szendi said.

He also said NATO had ordered an air patrol near the Hungarian-Romanian border, the first report that the Western defence alliance had become involved.

Danish police said threats had been directed at traffic at Copenhagen airport but that there appeared to be no danger to passengers. The airport said it was "operating normally".

Czech police registered bomb threats to nine flights departing from or arriving in Prague. An airport spokesperson said no flights had been cancelled as a result.

However, an Italian airport authority source said a Wizz Air flight from Prague to Rome had been diverted to Venice.

France said four new bomb threats had been made to aircraft flying over French territory, and that all had landed safely.

A Ryanair flight from Rome landed as scheduled in Lisbon, CNN Portugal reported.

Security experts said on Thursday that the threats had the hallmarks of a coordinated "hybrid attack", although it was always possible that individuals were issuing copycat threats or acting on personal grievances.

WAVE OF SABOTAGE ACROSS EUROPE

While no country has attributed blame for the threats, they come after a wave of sabotage attacks and attempts on targets across Europe ranging from German electricity substations to defence-related facilities in the Baltic region, supermarket refrigerators in France and elsewhere and Leipzig airport in Germany.

Many officials have linked the campaign to Europe's support for Ukraine in its war against invading Russian forces, accusing Moscow of a campaign of "hybrid" disruptions that are essentially cheap to execute, easy to deny and not expected to trigger an armed response. Moscow has strongly denied involvement.

Spanish Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares told the national broadcaster TVE that, while it would take time to determine exactly what happened, "it cannot be mere coincidence that so many incidents with exactly the same modus operandi are happening across Europe".

"The most reasonable assumption is that we are facing an attempt at hybrid aggression and a form of psychological warfare," he said, adding that Europe must be prepared for more such challenges.

On Thursday, an airport source in Italy said bomb threats had been sent to several airlines and airport operators in Rome and Milan claiming to be from "fighters of the Male State", a far-right anti-feminist movement banned in Russia.

Reuters could not confirm who had sent the email. Vladislav Pozdnyakov, a Russian blogger who set up Male State in 2016, said it no longer existed and was not involved in any way.

(Reporting by Reuters bureaux; Writing by Kevin Liffey; Editing by Hugh Lawson)