The US city of Los Angeles ordered more than 1,000 public schools to close on Tuesday over a threat of a terror attack.
New York City officials say they received the threat that there will be attack with bombs and assault rifles, sending hundreds of thousands of students home , which led to the closure of the Los Angeles school system but quickly concluded that it was a hoax.
The emailed threats to school officials to Los Angeles and New York spoke of teams of jihadists using guns, bombs and nerve gas to attack public schools — were largely identical in their wording, and both had been routed through a server in Frankfurt, apparently by the same person, officials said.
New York Police Commissioner William Bratton said he thought Los Angeles officials overreacted by deciding to close the nation’s second-largest school system. He said a school superintendent received the threatening email Tuesday morning. Bratton said the person who wrote the note claimed to be a jihadist but made errors that made it clear the person was a prankster.
We don’t see this as a credible terrorist threat, @CommissBratton says pic.twitter.com/I83bN9rkG8
Working closely with the @FBI, Joint Terrorism Task Force, and LAPD on this threat, @CommissBratton
Ramon Cortines, the superintendent of Los Angeles schools, said he ordered the shutdown after police alerted him to a threat “made to not just one school, but many schools in this school district.”
The Los Angeles unified school district tweeted: “LAUSD schools are closed today due to credible threat.”
A Los Angeles school official says the threat that shut down the nation’s second-largest school district was emailed to a school board member and is believed to have come from an IP address in Frankfurt, Germany.
Los Angeles Unified School District spokeswoman Shannon Haber said Tuesday that she didn’t know if the district has ever closed all of its more than 900 schools and 187 public charter schools.
Police and FBI agents were called in to help search the more than 1,000 schools in the district, Cortines told a news conference, adding that he expected the operation to be completed by the end of the day.
