Hundreds of employees of the Armenian Ministry of Health and other government agencies were briefly evacuated on Wednesday after what turned out to be a false bomb alert.
The Armenian Ministry of Emergency Situations said security forces joined by rescue workers and demining experts were rushed to the ministry building in downtown Yerevan after an anonymous caller threatened to blow it up. They found no explosive devices in the building that also houses two other ministries.
“The alert was false,” a senior Armenian police official, Suren Khudoyan, told RFE/RL’s Armenian service. “The police carried out searches and found nothing dangerous. The employees are now returning to work.”
A police spokesman said shortly afterwards that law-enforcement officers have already identified the person who made the bomb threat. But it was not immediately clear whether the suspect was detained.
False bomb alerts made over the phone have not been uncommon in Armenia. They have targeted government institutions, at least one private firm, Yerevan’s Zvartnots international airport and even a school in the Armenian capital. In virtually all of those cases, the callers were identified and prosecuted by the authorities.
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