Bengaluru: Following a spate of hoax bomb threat emails targeting over 20 hospitals in New Delhi, six hospitals within the St Philomena Hospital chain in Bengaluru also received similar threats on Sunday.

Six private hospitals here received a bomb threat via email which turned out to be a hoax, police said on Monday.

Police began an extensive search operation along with dog and bomb disposal teams in these city hospitals.

According to a PTI report, "However, no suspicious object was found inside the premises of these hospitals", a senior police official said.

"It was a hoax threat," he said.

According to the report, Bengaluru Police’s Special Branch got an e-mail on Sunday which claimed that the explosive materials were placed inside the hospital. The mail did not specify the branch and police rushed to all hospital branches. After proper combing operation, the threat is declared as a hoax. An investigation has already been launched by Bengaluru Police to catch the culprits behind it, reports HT.

The email to the hospitals on Sunday claimed, "I have placed explosive devices in your building. They will explode in the following hours. This isn't a threat, you have a few hours to disarm the bomb or else the blood of the innocent people inside of the building will be on your hands."

Medical Dialogues team recently reported that days after over 150 schools in Delhi-NCR received an identical threat email claiming that explosives had been planted on their premises, triggering massive evacuations and searches before it was declared a hoax, twenty hospitals too received similar threats on Sunday. While threats to schools were received from a Russia-based mailing service, Sunday’s threats to hospitals and two other installations were received from a Europe-based mailing service company ‘beeble.com’, officials said.