Police in Slovakia are trying to find out who sent more than 1,000 bomb threats to schools and other institutions on Tuesday.

Emails from an anonymous sender reportedly began arriving at 05:00, alleging that explosives were stored in hundreds of schools spanning the country’s eight regions.

Classes were suspended as specialist teams investigated the alerts. The vast majority were sent to schools, but Slovakia’s national police announced on social media that at least 110 banks and 40 electrical stores also received the bomb threats.

It comes after similar emails were reportedly sent to more than 120 schools in the Bratislava region last week, according to police.

In April, Slovakia’s newly elected populist-nationalist leader, Robert Fico, pledged not to send “one more round of ammunition” to Ukraine.

… Mr Fico has refused to join about 20 countries that have signed up to a Czech-led operation to procure large quantities of artillery ammunition on the global arms market.