A 16-year-old has been arrested over a bomb hoax near Paris, police sources say, as authorities scramble to halt a week of bomb scares at airports, schools and landmarks.

The spate of fake threats has hit a country on high alert since the Hamas onslaught on Israel and the fatal stabbing of a teacher in the northern French city of Arras last week.

The teenager was arrested yesterday in Saint-Ouen-l’Aumône, a town northwest of Paris, over a bomb threat emailed to his school that caused the evacuation of around a thousand pupils.