A bomb alert is under way at the Calais-Frethun train station in northern France, local authorities said on Thursday. 

The bomb alert is also affecting international train travel, including the Eurostar.

The alert may have an impact on rail traffic, the Pas-de-Calais prefecture said on social media platform X.

International high-speed rail service Eurostar said some of its trains between London and Paris were being affected.

‘At the request of the French authorities, trains are currently unable to pass through Calais-Fréthun station. This is causing delays to some services to and from London’, the company said in a statement.

Yesterday, schools were evacuated across Italy on Wednesday following a series of hoax bomb threats.

Similar hoax threats were reported in schools in Britain and Ireland, which prompted some evacuations.

Italian PM Giorgia Meloni said she had called a government meeting for Wednesday, with Italian media reporting that 312 schools had received threats.

A Eurostar train is seen waiting to cross from the Channel to England, at the Calais-Frethun train station (File picture)

‘At present, based on the checks carried out, no element has emerged that would suggest there is a concrete danger,’ she said on Facebook.

‘The reports instead appear to be linked to a strategy aimed at generating alarm and concern, which is currently the subject of all the necessary in-depth investigations,’ Meloni said.

The threats come after a series of hoax bomb alerts in recent weeks including on flights across Europe and cyber attacks on supermarket refrigeration systems in several European countries.

On Friday, flights to and from Britain were targeted for the third time that week.

And newsrooms including Sky News, the Irish national broadcaster RTE and Bulgarian media station Nova TV were also targeted with threats.

An email sent to RTE warned that last week’s chaos was ‘only the beginning’ and that ‘the clock is ticking’.

Last Thursday, emails sent to airports in Rome and Sofia were signed by ‘the fighters of the Male State’, a Russian radical misogynist movement, but on Friday its founder denied the group had any links to the hoax bomb threats. 

Some European officials suspect Russia may be behind a campaign of disruption to everyday life in European nations supporting Ukraine after Moscow’s invasion.

Russia denies that and accuses the West of ​a smear campaign.

Iran is another ​suspect. France summoned Iran’s ambassador on ⁠Tuesday after accusing Tehran of a cyberattack that disabled refrigerators in hundreds of supermarkets last week.

Iran rejected those accusations as ‘baseless and hostile’.

This is a breaking news story. More to follow.