A newly opened Telegram channel posted late on April 11 a message threatening shooting sprees in nearly two dozen schools in Yerevan, listing their specific numbers, as well as in two popular shopping malls in the Armenian capital.
“There are 20 of us, we are not afraid, the police cannot catch us. We will shoot you dead and cut your throats. You will be destroyed in your own schools,” the threatening post written in Russian and published on the Telegram channel called “ArmeniaEnd” said, announcing the attacks for April 12.
The message caused widespread panic early on Friday after parents apparently began to share it among themselves on Messenger and in other online chat groups.
Pushkin School in central Yerevan was one of many hit by the panic. Its personnel told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service that while they tried to calm the students and their parents down, saying that they had been told by the authorities that the threat was a hoax, most, if not all, of the parents could not be convinced and insisted on taking their children out of school early, thus effectively disrupting classes.
An RFE/RL Armenian Service reporter noticed no police officers in the yard of the school where a group of students were reading and discussing what was written in the Telegram channel.
Minister of Education Zhanna Andreasian later told reporters that law enforcement bodies were investigating the case.
Only 15 hours after the appearance of the threat online Armenia’s National Security Service (NSS) addressed the matter, assessing the case as “coordinated information terror.”
The NSS urged members of the public not to panic, “keeping in mind that such manifestations may be repeated.”
Authorities said a criminal case on “spreading false information about terrorism” was initiated.
“It is a hybrid war. Children must distinguish between the true [and fake] sources of information,” Education Minister Andreasian said.