Donetsk, Feb 2 - DAN. At least ten towns in the Donetsk People’s Republic have received anonymous school bomb threat messages on Wednesday, local authorities reported.

Donetsk mayor Alexey Kulemzin was the first to report that messages on bombs planted in 85 city schools had come in early in the morning. The same warnings were forwarded to Gorlovka. Due to the emergency, both Donetsk and Gorlovka had schoolchildren switch to online study a day earlier than planned.

A similar situation occurred in Yenakiyevo. “Today, anonymous messages warned that bombs had been planted in all town schools. In this connection, students of 27 municipal education centers began to study from home starting Wednesday (a day earlier than planned), Yenakiyevo mayor Roman Khramenko wrote in his Telegram channel.

An anonymous email message warned about bombs planted in several Makeyevka schools. Specialists scrambled to find explosive devices on the premises of the targeted buildings after evacuating the people who were present there at the time,” a Makeyevka town administration official reported.

As this story was published, similar reports had been contributed by the heads of the administrations of Zhadanovka, Kirovskoye, Ilovaisk, Dokuchayevsk, Khartsyzsk and the Novoazov district.

It is the third time this week the DPR received bomb threat messages. On January 28, anonymous messages warned about bombs in 17 buildings in Donetsk, Makeyevka and Gorlovka. Nearly 3,700 people were evacuated overall. The targeted buildings included the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Information Ministry, the Central Republican Bank and trade and education centers. All the bomb threat messages proved false. Some of them came from Kiev-controlled areas.

On February 1, an anonymous message reported a bomb in the building of Donetsk’s Kiev district administration.  This time, an explosive device was indeed found. The MGB said it was comprised of four 400-gram TNT blocks and shrapnel. The bomb was found on the third floor of the building; it could be set off by a call to a mobile phone. The explosive device was rendered harmless at the scene. *jk