UK school with hundreds of Muslim students evacuated after bomb threat

A British school with hundreds of Muslim students was evacuated after it was subjected to a bomb threat on Tuesday, local media reported. 

Birmingham Live reported Hamd House School, in Birmingham, was swept by police on the final day of the academic year due to the threat. 

The school has 450 pupils aged between 11 and 16. It is a private school run with a Muslim ethos. 

The bomb threat was sent in an email to the school on Tuesday morning, with schools regulator Ofsted copied into the correspondence. 

“School was full and pupils were celebrating the last day before summer, we were giving out awards and having a day of celebration and fun on this special day, and this was hugely disrupting,” Israr Khan, the school’s proprietor, was quoted as saying by Birmingham Live. 

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Khan said police with sniffer dogs searched the grounds of the school and later gave it the all clear. 

He added that the school appeared to have been deliberately targeted, and that there had been other recent incidents against staff and the school. 

“At this stage the matter remains an open police investigation. An unusual and bizarre quirk to this situation is that the threat was also sent to Ofsted. The police have logged this incident as harassment,” said Khan.

“We will continue to cooperate fully with the authorities and follow any advice they provide.”

West Midlands Police told Middle East Eye: “We were called after a bomb threat was received by the school via an email. Officers attended and were satisfied there wasn’t a credible threat.”

MEE has reached out to Hamd House School for comment.

The school is rated as “outstanding” by the regulator Ofsted, which describes it as a “highly inclusive” school where each child is “safe, happy, visible and valued”. 

Mend, an NGO which monitors and combats Islamophobia in the UK, said there had been “near silence” on the incident. 

It wrote on X: “Ask yourself what the reaction would be if 450 children at any other school were threatened this way.

“The quiet tells you something about whose safety is treated as a story and whose is treated as background noise.”

The NGO added: “It should be investigated as a hate crime targeting Muslim children, especially as there had been other recent incidents against staff and the school.”

middleeasteye.net