Bogus bomb threats cause chaos

Employees are evacuated from the Attorney General's office in Warsaw following a bomb alert. Photo: PAP/Jakub Kaminski

Hospitals, courts and prosecutor's offices all received threatening emails.

In Warsaw, a number of hospitals were evacuated as well 300 people from the Attorney General's office.

Police say they have found no explosives at any of the buildings mentioned.

Interior Minister Bartlomiej Sienkiewicz told the PAP news agency that "we are dealing with false alarms."

Employees and patients and Orlowski hospital in Warsaw evacuated: photo - tomasz Gzell/PAP

Minister Sienkiewicz added that he has established a team comprising of all the emergency services, whose task will be to determine the identity of those who wrote the emails.

Police say they could face up to eight years in prison.

Outside the capital, about 300 employees were evacuated from the District Prosecutor's Office in Krakow as sniffer dogs scoured the building.

Email warnings were also received at public institutions in Szczecin, on the Baltic coast, as well as in the Silesian cities of Katowice and Jelenia Gora.

“The Prosecutor's Office in Katowice received an email during the night saying that at noon today there may be a bomb explosion [in the building],” said spokeswoman for Katowice's state prosecutor Marta Zawada-Dybek.

The emails were all sent “probably by the same group, because the content is very similar,” police spokesman in Warsaw Mariusz Sokolowski has said.

All institutions affected were working normally on Tuesday afternoon. (pg/nh)

source: PAP/IAR