French PM vows to punish perpetrators threatening schools

Paris, March 22 (IANS) French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal has promised to hunt down and severely punish the perpetrators who sent threatening messages to dozens of schools in the Paris region this week.The schools, mostly secondary schools in Ile-de-France where the capital Paris is located, received messages on Wednesday threatening to blow up schools, accompanied by footage of beheadings, local media reported on Thursday.”It is absolutely unacceptable and inadmissible to seek to disrupt the serenity of schools,” Attal told the media after an inter-ministerial meeting on school safety on Thursday, Xinhua news agency reported.He said every effort is being made to find the perpetrators of such threats and promised to punish them most severely.”They think they are anonymous, but we will hunt them down. They think they are safe, but we will punish them… Dozens of perpetrators of such threats that have taken place over the past few months have been brought to justice,” Attal added.According to local media reports, schools in France have experienced an increase in bomb threats in recent months. The Interior Ministry disclosed that French schools received nearly 800 hoax bomb alerts in the three months from September to November 2023.–IANSint/khz