Thousands evacuated after bomb threat

At least 2,000 people were evacuated from a hospital in downtown Moscow after a bomb threat was received on Monday.

According to Russia’s Tass News Agency, police took an anonymous call targeting the Sklifosovsky emergency hospital.

Experts in explosive detection and emergency policemen were dispatched immediately, and stayed in the hospital for the whole night, Tass quoted a source from the Ministry of Emergency Situations as saying.

Security officers checked all the rooms of the facility, and evacuated more than 2,000 people, but there is no official information yet clarifying whether the threat was a hoax. No casualties have been reported.

Earlier, both Russian and Ukrainian media reported Ukraine’s former president Viktor Yanukovych stayed in the hospital for a short period.

The Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper reported on its website citing a source that Yanukovych had been sent to the Sklifosovsky in November with a suspected spine and knee injury, which it is thought he suffered playing tennis.

The politician was sent to intensive care and later transferred to a private clinic, Ukrainian news network Unian reported.

Apart from the bomb threat to the hospital, Moscow police received another anonymous call about a device planted at the Leningradsky Railway Terminal on the same day.

Police officers have been dispatched to inspect the railway terminal, Tass reported.

The threats are the second such incident in the past month, as hoax calls were received about bombs at 15 Moscow shopping malls and the Kievsky Railway Terminal on Nov 28.

According to a Russian law enforcement source, all calls came from a telephone number registered in Ukraine.

A series of hoax bomb calls have been recorded across Russia since September 2017. Nearly 4,000 facilities received bomb threats and over 2.6 million people in various cities had to be evacuated.