WASHINGTON: All schools in Los Angeles were closed on Tuesday due to an unspecified threat.

A special notice posted on the All Los Angeles Unified School District’s website said that the schools were “closed today to ensure safety of students. Parents should retrieve students at reunion gates with proper ID”.

Teachers and support personnel also have been ordered to stay away from schools.

Los Angeles Unified is America’s second largest school district, with more than 900 campuses and 640,000 students. Ramon Cortines, the school system’s superintendent, told news conference on Tuesday that the threat was against students at multiple schools.

“It was not to one school, two schools or three schools, it was many schools, not specifically identified, but there were many schools,” Mr Cortines told L. A. Times. “That’s the reason that I took the action that I did.”

Mr Cortines said he has also ordered a thorough search of the district’s every school. He said that while it is not unusual for schools to receive threats, this one was “rare” and comes at a time of heightened concern about safety.

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

Officials offered few details about the nature of the threat, calling it only an “electronic threat” that came in the form of a “message.”

FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller told Times that the FBI’s Los Angeles office and the Los Angeles Police Department were assisting with the threat investigation.

Published in Dawn, December 16th, 2015