Schools across Scotland and Northern Ireland have been evacuated after receiving bomb threats.

Hundreds of schools received threatening emails and were forced to evacuate or send pupils home.

Threats were also sent to hundreds of schools across Ireland, as well as UK and Irish news organisations, including the BBC and The Guardian.

All schools across Edinburgh were briefly evacuated this morning, The Herald reports, while swathes of classrooms in the Highlands and Fife were also impacted.

The Education Authority in Northern Ireland said an email message had been sent ‘to a large number of schools’.

Pupils huddled under foil blankets in Kinross to keep warm after being forced to leave their classrooms.

Parents at Leslie Primary School in Fife were told that ‘hundreds’ of schools had received a threatening email.

Police Scotland said the messages, which were sent to distribution lists across the UK, are being treated as hoaxes and there is no credible threat to the public.

They added: ‘Our advice is that there is no requirement to evacuate schools or keep children away from education based solely on the content of the emails.

‘Police Scotland’s Cyber and Fraud Unit is carrying out extensive enquiries to establish the source of the messages, and officers continue to liaise with law enforcement partners across the UK and internationally.’

Officers in Northern Ireland are making ‘urgent inquiries’ after threatening messages were sent to as many as 300 schools.

Schools have been advised to remain open ‘unless otherwise advised by the PSNI’.

A wave of identical bomb threats also hit at least 300 Italian schools this morning.

According to La Repubblica, the message read: ‘This is Mikhail Andropov, leader of the Vilayat of Misoginistan. We have come to annihilate you. We will carry out genocide against the Italians.

‘I’ve been preparing for this for a long time: to kill every single one of you. I’ve just left a powerful, remote-controlled explosive device inside a plastic bag in your building. I’ve positioned it so that the shockwave will spread throughout the building. All that will remain of you will be bones and a bloody mess.

‘We also planted a bomb in the engine of your prime minister’s car. Then we’ll finish off the survivors with stab wounds.’

Mikhail Andropov is also the name on the threatening emails sent to European television stations last week.

Emergency safety procedures were implemented in Rome, Milan, Naples, Bologna, and several other provinces.

The chaos comes after hoax bomb threats hit schools across Scotland and Northern Ireland in October, with as many as 300 schools receiving messages before 9am warning devices had been placed on the premises.

This is a breaking news story and is being updated.

Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.

For more stories like this, .

MORE: Three more London schools could close as pupil numbers plummet

MORE: Parents blast primary school’s ‘absurd’ decision to ban children from playing tag

MORE: Three teens arrested over sword attack on boy that put schools into lockdown