The Yerevan municipality said engineering teams with bomb-sniffer dogs had been deployed to conduct searches at several metro stations.
The Ministry of Emergency Situations later said no explosive devices were found. The metro resumed its work in the afternoon.
This is the second false alert in the last three days about a bomb or bombs having been planted in the metro.
On Sunday, hours after a deadly explosion and fire at the Surmalu shopping center in Yerevan, Armenia’s Ministry of Emergency Situations also received bomb threats concerning multiple other facilities in the capital, including the metro.
Passengers were evacuated and the work of the metro then was suspended for several hours.
Eventually, the bomb threats reportedly received via email proved false. The National Security Service launched an investigation into the false alerts apparently made from outside Armenia.
An official at the Ministry of Emergency Situations told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service on Monday that since the beginning of this year they have received over 30 false bomb alerts – a four-time increase over last year.
Harutyun Chebeyan, who manages a shift at the ministry’s National Crisis Management Center, said bomb threats received by e-mail mostly concern important transport hubs, such as the Yerevan metro and the Zvartnots international airport near the Armenian capital.
Evacuations of people happening in response to bomb threats have caused some discontent about inconveniences among commuters and visitors of shopping centers in Yerevan in recent months.
But the official said that even though all previous bomb threats eventually proved to be false, security and emergency services have to respond to them and take action every single time.
“Human and material resources have to be deployed. There is a procedure to follow,” Chebeyan explained.
Amid the spike in the number of false bomb alerts in recent months, Armenia’s National Security Service on Monday called on the media and citizens “to refrain from publishing unverified information and comments on the Internet about the threat of terrorist attacks in Armenia and to use only official reports in order to avoid unnecessary panic among the population.”
Cybersecurity expert Samvel Martirosian said that email alerts about explosive devices are often sent during crisis situations similar to the shopping center explosion in Armenia.
“There is an attempt to influence the socio-political situation in Armenia as a whole. The case of the explosion at the Surmalu market clearly shows that someone was trying to continue chaos and amplify panic. Besides, a huge number of emergency workers were deployed for a senseless search for non-existent bombs while their presence at the explosion site would probably have been more important,” Martirosian said.