A bomb alert was declared at Calais-Fréthun railway station in northern France on Thursday, according to local authorities.
The incident disrupted international rail services, including Eurostar trains operating through the Channel Tunnel.
The Pas-de-Calais prefecture warned on X that the alert could affect rail traffic in the area.
Eurostar confirmed that several services between London and Paris had been impacted.
‘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 operator said in a statement.
The disruption followed a series of hoax bomb threats that led to school evacuations across Italy on Wednesday.
Schools in Britain and Ireland also received similar threats, prompting evacuations at several locations.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said she had convened a government meeting on Wednesday, as Italian media reported that 312 schools had received bomb warnings.
A Eurostar train waits to cross the Channel to England at Calais-Fréthun station (File picture)
Schools across Italy were evacuated on Wednesday after a series of hoax bomb threats
‘Based on the checks carried out so far, there is no indication of a concrete danger,’ Meloni wrote on Facebook.
‘The reports instead appear to be part of a strategy designed to create alarm and anxiety. All necessary investigations are now under way,’ she added.
The threats came amid a wider wave of hoax bomb alerts reported in recent weeks, including warnings targeting flights across Europe and cyberattacks against supermarket refrigeration systems in several countries.
On Friday, flights to and from Britain were targeted for the third time that week.
News organisations, including Sky News, Ireland’s national broadcaster RTÉ and Bulgaria’s Nova TV, also received threats.
An email sent to RTÉ warned that the disruption seen the previous week was ‘only the beginning’ and that ‘the clock is ticking’.
Emails sent to airports in Rome and Sofia last Thursday were signed by ‘the fighters of the Male State’, a Russian radical misogynist movement. However, the group’s founder denied on Friday that it had any connection to the hoax threats.
Friday’s disruption affected at least nine flights arriving at or departing from Prague Airport.
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‘The threats concern incoming flights from Denmark, Spain and Great Britain. Outgoing flights affected are bound for the Netherlands, Cyprus, Romania, Italy and Great Britain,’ spokeswoman Denisa Hejtmankova said.
Two flights to Sofia also received warnings on Friday, including one arriving from Stansted Airport in Britain and another from Brussels.
A Ryanair flight from Rome that landed in Lisbon was also the subject of a bomb threat, while the French prime minister’s office confirmed that four aircraft flying over France had been targeted.
Hungarian fighter jets escorted three civilian aircraft affected by bomb threats while they were in Hungarian airspace on Friday, Defence Minister Romulusz Ruszin-Szendi said on social media.
He said the aircraft included an Airbus A321 travelling from Brussels to Sofia, along with flights from Prague to Cyprus and Bucharest.
RTÉ staff were evacuated from the broadcaster’s Dublin studios after a hoax bomb warning
Cyber attackers targeted hundreds of supermarkets in France, causing freezer systems to defrost last month
Some European officials suspect Russia is behind a campaign intended to disrupt daily life in countries supporting Ukraine following Moscow’s invasion.
Russia rejects the allegations, describing them as part of a Western smear campaign. Iran is also considered a potential suspect.
France summoned Iran’s ambassador on Tuesday after accusing Tehran of carrying out a cyberattack that disabled refrigeration systems in hundreds of supermarkets the previous month.
The attack, which hit hundreds of supermarkets in October, was among the most disruptive cyber incidents reported since the Iran war began this February.
Other incidents have included attacks on the Los Angeles transit system in March, US water-treatment facilities in July and ships travelling to the United States in August.
The October 11 cyberattack overrode temperature controls on commercial refrigerators at hundreds of sites. Cybersecurity experts previously told Reuters that the operation appeared relatively easy to carry out.
The company responsible for many of the affected units said several were obsolete or operating with outdated firmware, potentially leaving them vulnerable to intrusion.
The consequences were nevertheless severe. In some cases, refrigerators became so hot that they caught fire.
The Paris prosecutor’s office said the attack displayed techniques associated with the ‘Shahid Kaveh Group’, an elite offensive cyber unit believed to operate on behalf of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Prosecutors have sought international arrest warrants for the group’s leader and two deputies.
Iran dismissed the accusations as ‘baseless and hostile’.