Residents of Hawaii on Saturday received a warning of a "missile attack" on the islands. About 8 o'clock in the morning several dozen residents of the state posted screenshots of the messages they received on their mobile phones in social networks. "The threat of a missile attack on Hawaii. Seek refuge immediately. This is not a teaching, "read the text.

20 minutes later, the State Emergency Management Agency in its Twitter reported that the threat of attack is false.

The US Pacific Fleet Command (USPACOM) also confirmed that the original message was sent in error. "USPACOM did not detect a missile threat to Hawaii," said Fleet spokesman Dave Benam. - The previous message was sent by mistake. The state of Hawaii will spread notice of this as quickly as possible ".

Member of Congress from the State of Hawaii Tulsi Gabbard reported in an interview with CNN that the warning sent out provoked panic.

"You can not imagine what started," she said..

"Such a threat exists in Hawaii, so people who received this message on their phones thought that they and their family members had only 15 minutes to die," Hawaii Senator Maisie Hirono on Twitter also confirmed that the alarm was false. "Now that tension (in the region) is growing, we must be sure that the information that the public receives is reliable," he added.. "We need to find out what happened, and do everything to ensure that this does not happen again".

Source: Voice of America.