Paris (France) (AFP) – A series of false bomb alerts shook Europe on Friday, after dozens of similar alerts this week, targeting commercial flights but also the media and mobilizing security forces.
Published on: 06/11/2026 - 1:54 p.m.
Eleven flights departing from or arriving in Prague were the subject of a bomb threat, the Czech capital's airport told AFP.
Four new bomb alerts were also issued on Friday on planes flying over French territory, which landed "without incident" and on which the demining services "are carrying out safety inspections", announced the Prime Minister's services.
A Ryanair flight which was to leave Lisbon for Rome on Friday morning was also targeted by a "bomb threat" which turned out to be unfounded, according to the Portuguese authorities.
After similar false alarms earlier this week, at least 20 flights had already been targeted by bomb threats on Thursday. In all these cases, no explosive was found.
“NATO continues to monitor the situation and coordinate closely with allies,” commented the transatlantic organization.
The media sector was also targeted in Ireland on Friday. The premises of several Irish media, including the audiovisual group RTÉ, were evacuated on Friday morning after receiving a bomb threat.
“Hybrid operations”?
“We do not yet know whether it is one person behind this operation or a coordinated action,” Deputy Prime Minister Simon Harris said on the radio, referring to a “very serious and evolving situation”.
This series of false alarms, difficult to attribute, has the effect of mobilizing security services and sowing fear, at zero cost, experts point out.
Without prejudging the identity of the perpetrators, "it must be seen in the context of hybrid operations against European states", reacted to AFP Jean-Marc Rickli, director of global and emerging risks at the Geneva Policy Center.
“It costs nothing to those who do it but it has a significant impact at the logistical level and of course on the perception of the population. The authorities cannot ignore these alerts because if one materializes, they will be held responsible,” he argues.
The vagueness surrounding the authors of these alerts makes it all the more difficult to find a solution.
Demands sent to Rome and Sofia airports on Thursday came from “fighters for the male state.” This seems to refer to the name of a Russian ultranationalist movement, without it being possible to verify the link.
Europeans regularly accuse Russia and Iran of carrying out destabilization operations against them on their territory, whether these are disinformation campaigns, sabotage or cyberattacks.
“avoid overreacting”
In recent years "situations of intermediate confrontations have emerged, below the threshold of armed conflicts, which involve States in carrying out hostile and destabilizing actions towards other States", sometimes through proxies, underlines a European security source, citing "cyber actions, informational maneuvers, intimidation, or even the exploitation of migratory flows".
According to London police chief Mark Rowley, it will be a matter of keeping a cool head.
"We have already experienced this in the past. When we faced terrorist threats linked to the IRA (Irish paramilitary group, editor's note), decades ago, we spoke of '10 pence terrorism': a false call announcing a bomb could disrupt an entire city. We had to learn to live by distinguishing between what was a hoax and what was real," he declared on BBC 4 radio on Friday.
“In this new threat environment, with malicious actors all over the world, sometimes controlled by hostile states, we will have to adapt this same method, to avoid over-reacting to each message we receive online.”
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