Police Scotland is assessing a series of posts published on a large Scottish tourism Instagram account claiming that explosive devices had been planted in shopping centres and universities across the country, the UK Defence Journal understands.

The posts appeared on the account 100scotland, which has around 140,000 followers and normally publishes photography of Scottish landmarks. The material was first reported by the Edinburgh Evening News.

We understand that Police Scotland has said it is aware of the posts and is assessing them to establish the source.

We have seen the screenshots. One of them is included below.

The posts claim to come from a group styling itself WF, which the account described as a terrorist organisation, and state that the group had decided to use the page to publicise what it called pranks. One post claimed that bombs had been planted in shopping centres, universities and other places where people gather in Scotland, ending with the line “Good luck finding our bombs”. A further post carried the words “Scotland will be dead”.

The posts directed readers to a Telegram channel and tagged a second Instagram account, inviting direct contact. The UK Defence Journal is not reproducing those handles. The tagged account has been linked to a SoundCloud profile whose listed location is given as Russia, though that detail is self-declared and carries no verification.

Timestamps on the posts indicate they were published within hours of each other, appearing alongside the account’s routine content, which included an image of the Kelpies at Grangemouth.

Claims of this kind circulated through social media accounts are common and are very rarely followed by any device being found. A wave of hoax bomb threats sent by email and social media has affected schools, hospitals and public buildings across the United Kingdom and elsewhere in Europe over the past several years, many of them traced to individuals operating from outside the country and some routed through Telegram channels advertising the service. Scottish schools and public buildings have been among those targeted in previous rounds, with evacuations ordered as a precaution and nothing subsequently located.

That does not make them costless, of course, as each threat has to be assessed, and where the assessment cannot immediately rule out a risk, buildings are cleared and police resources committed, which is generally the point of making the threat in the first place.

Making a hoax bomb threat is a criminal offence in Scotland, prosecuted under the Criminal Law (Consolidation) (Scotland) Act 1995, and carries a maximum sentence of seven years on indictment. Gaining unauthorised access to a computer system or social media account is separately an offence under the Computer Misuse Act 1990.