St. Petersburg has become the latest city in Russia to be targeted by suspected bomb threats with evacuations taking place in malls across the city, the Rosbalt news agency reported Thursday.
Since Sunday, more than a dozen cities have been hit with a string of bomb scares, leading to mass evacuations at train stations, malls and other public places. In Moscow, around 10,000 people were evacuated from eight schools on Thursday, the RBC news outlet reports, citing an unidentified official in law enforcement.
Witnesses told Rosbalt on Thursday that central St. Petersburg’s Galeria shopping complex and 12 other malls in the city were also being cleared. The news was confirmed by the local Fontanka.ru outlet. An unnamed law enforcement source told the outlet that authorities are trying to verify the bomb threats.
The wave of bomb scares has been largely ignored by Russian state television, with none of the prime-time news shows mentioning the incidents on Wednesday.