The transmission of a warning message to a mobile terminal in a mobile communication network is triggered by an emergency event. The mobile terminal is first made aware of the need to receive a warning message by reception of an emergency event notification. The warning message is divided into a plurality of message segments. Each segment is transmitted in a separate paging message over a paging channel to mobile terminals in an idle mode. Information is added to each message segment to enable the mobile terminal to discriminate between segments belonging to different warning messages.