Bomb Hoaxes Target Passenger Jets As Shadowy Group Reveals Its Bizarre Grudge

Bomb hoaxers turned European skies into chaos on Thursday. At least 14 passenger jets were hit with phony threats, and fighter jets were scrambled to shadow the planes to the ground.

It was the third wave of the madness this week. An Aer Lingus jet bound from Dublin to Rome was abruptly yanked off course and escorted by French military aircraft to the Évreux air base west of Paris. The office of French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu said it was keeping close watch.

Over Italy, air force jets locked onto Finnair Flight 1761 from Helsinki and escorted it into Rome’s Fiumicino Airport, where a bomb squad tore through the plane. They found nothing.

The chaos spread fast. Three Ryanair flights bound for Sofia, Bulgaria, were targeted, and one from London was diverted to Plovdiv. Four planes headed to Prague, flown by Ryanair, easyJet, and Sky Express, were threatened in anonymous emails. Flights out of Warsaw, Milan, and Copenhagen were also caught up in the panic.

A shadowy outfit calling itself the “Fighters of the Male State” took credit for threats against two Rome-bound flights. The group emailed a Belgian baggage company that works at Fiumicino and railed against a “feminist regime.”

“Your feminist regime will remember this forever,” the message warned.

Every plane was searched, and every threat turned out to be bogus. Not a single explosive was found.

“Malicious hoax,” fumed British Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander.

The mayhem followed a threat from last month when an Austrian Airlines flight from Tel Aviv was forced to reroute to Bulgaria. On Monday, a Wizz Air jet from London to Sofia made an emergency stop in Budapest.

Tuesday brought another wave of about 10 threatened flights. Italian fighter jets escorted a plane from Dublin to Rome. A LOT Polish Airlines jet from Heathrow was diverted to Warsaw’s Modlin Airport, which was shut down while cops searched the Boeing 737. A Ryanair flight from Manchester landed in Murcia, Spain, where it was met by bomb-sniffing dogs.

Czech police said they saw the threats as having low credibility. But authorities across the continent are scrambling for answers.

Some security watchers see the fingerprints of a coordinated campaign, the kind of “hybrid” attacks that European officials have sometimes pinned on Russia or Iran. The European Union isn’t ready to go there yet.

“Too early to draw conclusions on whether the reported incidents are linked,” said E.U. Transport Commissioner Apostolos Tzitzikostas.

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