Los Angeles schools closed over threat

The US city of Los Angeles has ordered all public schools closed after a threat was received. 

Los Angeles Unified School District schools were closed Tuesday morning and all students already at school were sent home because of an unspecified “electronic” threat.

The FBI was notified and the threat is being analyzed, school police said.

Law enforcement agents have been ordered to sweep all schools in LAUSD, the second largest school district in the US.

“This is a rare threat; we get threats all the time… What we are doing today is no different to what we normally do, but we are doing it on a mass scale,” Ramon Cortines, the school district’s superintendent, said at a news conference.

He said the threat was directed against students at many schools.

“It was not to one school, two schools or three schools, it was many schools, not specifically identified, but there were many schools,” the superintendent said. “That’s the reason that I took the action that I did.”

After the search at all schools is completed, Cortines and school board members will decide whether classes will resume on Wednesday.

LAUSD has more than 900 schools and about 640,000 students in kindergarten through 12th grade.

Los Angeles is an hour’s drive from San Bernardino, where 14 people were killed by two alleged terrorists less than two weeks ago.