UFA, September 25. /TASS/. Authorities in Ufa, the capital of western Russia’s Bashkiria republic, have reported that multiple bomb hoaxes caused the evacuation of more than 15,000 people on Sunday.
"On Sunday, the city of Ufa was attacked by hoax phone calls about suspicious abandoned objects and planted explosive devices. There were a total of 20 calls. Ufa’s emergencies services were deployed to the scene. Some 15,485 people were immediately evacuated. All facilities were checked and no explosives or suspicious objects were found," the city mayor’s office said.
On Sunday, Bashkiria’s police told TASS the law enforcement agents did not find any dangerous objects during the checks into bomb threats in Ufa. They gave no details on the number of people evacuated.
A wave of bomb calls in Russian cities began on September 11. Among the targeted facilities were shopping centers, administrative buildings, schools, passenger stations, airports, museums and night clubs. None of the threats have been carried out.
Police believe this was a planned action organized by a group of persons. The mass media offered various theories, from the so-called Ukrainian trace (like in 2014, when false bomb calls came from Ukrainian telephone numbers) to a theory that the Islamic State terrorist group is behind these bomb threats.
According to a police source, more than 1,000 hoax bomb calls were received in Russian cities in the past week. In all, about 400,000 people were evacuated.