Paris, France - Prime Minister Gabriel Attal on Thursday pledged to "hunt down" the people responsible for sending threats to at least 30 schools in the Paris region this week.
France's Prime Minister Gabriel Attal (C), flanked by France's Minister for Justice Eric Dupond-Moretti (L), France's Secretary of State for Citizenship Sabrina Agresti-Roubache (2ndR) and France's Minister for Education and Youth Nicole Belloubet (R), addresses media following a meeting focused on school safety at Hotel Matignon in Paris on March 21, 2024. (Photo by Thomas SAMSON / POOL / AFP)
The schools received threatening messages accompanied by "shocking" footage of beheadings, according to France's education ministry.
The establishments -- mainly secondary schools -- received "serious threats" containing "justification of and incitement to terrorism," a representative of the education ministry told AFP.
The messages came through the ENT digital platform that serves as a link between teachers, pupils and parents, internal emails, or the Pronote software used by the education ministry.
"They think they will remain anonymous but we will hunt them down," Attal said after chairing a meeting on school security.
"We will punish them."
Investigators were working to "identify the perpetrators", the ministry said earlier, adding that psychological support had been offered to children or adults who had watched the "shocking videos".
According to a police source, at least five high schools in the department of Yvelines west of Paris received bomb threats between Wednesday and Thursday.
Perpetrators "hacked a student's email address" in order to distribute the message and a beheading video, the source said.
One school in the Val-d'Oise department northwest of the capital received a message "threatening a terrorist attack on Thursday", a police source said. The email came with "links to a video showing people being decapitated".
In the Seine-et-Marne department, east of Paris, a secondary school received a message saying explosives had been hidden throughout the establishment, another police source said.
The latest threats follow a flurry of false bomb alerts that targeted schools, airport and tourist sites in autumn 2023.
In October, a radicalised Islamist stabbed a former teacher to death in the northern town of Arras.