Mayor: Terrorist threat made against Amsterdam on Thursday

Update, 2:55 p.m., 28 January 2015: Details about the number of threats, and who received them were disclosed by the city and added to the article. Broadcaster AT5 indicated it was a threat against a school in the capital. With reporting by Zack Newmark. Several reports of a terrorist threat in Amsterdam had investigative services in the city on high alert Thursday morning, Mayor Eberhard van der Laan told the General Affairs committee at City Hall. The nature of the threat was not disclosed, but the response to the threat was "scaled down" later in the day, a city council spokesman confirmed to the NL Times. The threat has nothing to do with the the European Union presidency, meetings which are mainly taking place in Amsterdam, the mayor said. The city later revealed that multiple threats were received by police during the course of Thursday morning. Police turned up Thursday morning on a report of a bomb underneath the Amsterdams Lyceum, a well-known secondary school in the Buitenveldert neighborhood of the city's Zuid district, according to broadcaster AT5. "If you know our building you know how difficult it is to place a bomb," principle Roel Schoonveld told AT5. "We did not take the message too seriously and just continued with the lessons. The people are so panicked because of Paris," he added. The British School in Den Haag was evacuated most of Tuesday morning after it received threatening messages. No evidence of foul play was found at the international school. At least 14 schools in the U.K., five in Paris, and one in Norway received threats that day. A group on Twitter took claim for the U.K. and French threats. The group is sympathetic with Russian and Syrian nationalists. According to the Amsterdam mayor on Thursday, the police, prosecutor's office and city government took measures immediately after learning of the threat. An investigation was launched to identify where the threat came from. Van der Laan would not comment on what measures were taken, saying that this type of information is never released, according to De Telegraaf. "The criminal investigation is ongoing to determine the person responsible," the city stated.