Wave of bomb threats afflict European flights for third time this week

A wave of bomb threats were issued to passenger flights around Europe on Friday for the third time this week, as Spain's foreign minister said the continent appeared to be facing "hybrid aggression and a form of psychological warfare".

Hoax threats disrupted dozens of passenger flights across Europe on Thursday, forcing unplanned landings by some planes and prompting fighter jets to escort or intercept others, a dramatic escalation after an initial wave on Tuesday.

No explosive devices have been found and all planes have landed safely.

Danish police said on Friday they were investigating threats directed at air traffic at Copenhagen airport, but 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 to flights departing from and arriving in Prague. An airport spokesperson said they concerned four inbound and five outbound flights, but that no explosive devices had been found and no flights had been cancelled or diverted as a result.

Shortly afterwards, an Italian airport authority source said a Wizz Air flight from Prague to Rome had been diverted to Venice and landed there safely.

The French prime minister's office said four new bomb threats had been made to aircraft flying over French territory, and that all had landed safely.

A bomb alert on a Ryanair flight from Rome to Lisbon prompted a security operation when it landed, CNN Portugal reported.

HALLMARKS OF COORDINATED 'HYBRID' ATTACK

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.

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 Russian invasion, accusing Moscow of a campaign of "hybrid" disruptions that are essentially cheap to execute, easily deniable, and not expected to trigger an armed response.

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".

Reuters could not independently confirm who had sent the email and there was no immediate indication of who was behind the other threats across Europe.

Vladislav Pozdnyakov, a Russian blogger who set up an anti-feminist movement called the Male State in 2016 that was later banned in Russia, said the group no longer existed and was not involved in any way.