Police are investigating after a series of violent threats were sent to some schools and media organisations across the country today.
Schools have been evacuated and parents asked to collect their children after the anonymous threats were made on Tuesday morning.
Auckland City CIB Detective Inspector Glenn Baldwin said police were aware of the threats emailed to schools and other institutions, saying they were perceived as "low risk".
"The Cybercrime team, supported by staff in other police districts, have initiated an investigation and are working to determine the source of the emails," he said.
Anyone with information which could assist police was urged to contact 105 either online, by phone, or anonymously via Crime Stoppers on 0800 555 111.
Earlier, students at Ara University in Canterbury told 1News they received a text saying a threat had been made toward the school, and they should evacuate immediately.
"We all got a text about 10-15 minutes ago saying that there was a bomb threat on some of the campuses, and we have to evacuate the building immediately," said IT student Charlotte Savage.
She said it was "pretty unnerving" and "annoying" as the students were due to begin an exam right before the evacuation.
"A lot of us have exams today, and a lot of us just want to get that out of the way. Now we're told to go home, so it's confusing," said student Lance Calderon.
Another student Xzayda Hauwai said: "It sucks. It's the end of the semester and its messing up all of our turn-in dates, and now we have something weird happening. It's just kind of annoying that all of our final things just can't be turned in."
"We have exams literally all through this week, and it's not good at all. Yup, really messed up," said Tobii McCauley.
Several media organisations, including RNZ and the NZ Herald, reported receiving threats.
Tauranga City Council was also evacuated from its Devonport Rd building due to a threat, Local Democracy reported.
Tauranga Mayor Mahe Drysdale told LDR the threat was “most likely a hoax”, but it had to be taken seriously.
"We’ve had a bomb threat to the building. We’ve spoken to police," he said.
"We’ve got our teams looking at CCTV footage... to try to understand. It’s most likely a hoax, however, we’ve got to protect our staff and keep everyone safe as much as we can.”
He said the plan was to evacuate the building.
"That’s a sensible thing to do, so we can go through and have a check as to whether there’s anything untoward."
The evacuation occurred during the lunch break of a council meeting.
The Ministry of Education has been approached for comment.
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