Bomb threat at Streif downhill ski race

From the Austrian edition of The Local

According to a report from Unser Tirol 24, an anonymous person has sent a bomb threat to the Österreich newspaper, warning of a bomb attack at the ski races in Kitzbühel, and claiming to be from a hitherto unknown group called Jihad Austria.

The threatening email, written in poor German, was sent to the newspaper editors on Thursday night saying that there was a bomb on the Streif Piste in Tyrol, the site of the current downhill ski races on the Hahnenkamm mountain.  The Streif is widely considered as the most demanding race course on the World Cup circuit. 

The email said “We are Jihad Austria!  At the ski race in Streif there will be bomb! There will be deaths!  The Islamic State will let Austria burn!  Consequences will not be the same!”

 . . . the threat was taken seriously, as 20,000 fans were expected to watch the ski race.  Any panic caused by a bomb might have led to more deaths from a stampede.

According to police, the e-mail’s author had some technical know-how, since the message was originally sent from a darknet server in Stockholm, which was accessed via The Onion Router (ToR) secure network, meaning the perpetrator is almost impossible to trace.