Multiple flights in Europe were targeted by bomb threats on Thursday, forcing emergency landings, searches and military escorts to airports including in France, Italy and Bulgaria. A British official called them “malicious hoaxes” that followed another rash of hoax threats earlier this week.

More than a dozen flights from cities including Copenhagen, Dublin, Helsinki, Madrid, Milan, Sofia and Warsaw were confirmed to have been targeted with bomb threats, most diverted to other airports for emergency landings. Others landed safely at their destinations. So far inspections have not turned up hazardous or suspicious materials.

British Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander told broadcasters that flights across Europe have been hit by “malicious hoax threats.”

European Union Transport Commissioner Apostolos Tzitzikostas said that “any threats against civilians are unacceptable,” and that the EU’s executive branch was in contact with affected member countries.

“It is too early to draw conclusions on whether the reported incidents are linked,” Tzitzikostas told reporters in Dublin. “National investigations remain ongoing.”

He said that an EU-level information-sharing mechanism on aviation security had been activated and that “we don’t have information yet whether this is a cyberattack.”

Such threats are not new, but the latest incidents come at a time of increased geopolitical tensions and other disruptions, including attacks on supermarket refrigeration systems, drone incursions in Europe and mysterious triggers to alert apps. Authorities have warned that hybrid threats abound.

A flight from Dublin to Rome was diverted to a military air base in western France because of a bomb threat, the French prime minister’s office said. The flight landed safely at the base in Evreux in Normandy, Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu’s office said.

Italian air force fighter jets escorted a Finnair flight from Helsinki to Rome after an email threat was received, according to an airport official with knowledge of the situation. It landed safely at Rome’s Leonardo da Vinci airport at around 9:30 a.m., and no explosive materials were found, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly.

Finnair said that two of its flights, including the one that landed in Rome, “faced unfounded hoax bomb scares.”

Greece’s Aegean Airlines confirmed Thursday that two flights — one from Thessaloniki to Milan and another from Athens to Vienna — received bomb threats that proved to be hoaxes.

Nothing suspicious was found on planes that landed in Milan, Vienna, Prague, Brussels and Warsaw, officials said.

Several flights across Europe received hoax bomb threats earlier this week that prompted searches, diversions and, in one case, an escort by the Italian air force until landing, officials said.

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