Mass evacuation in Frankfurt with WWII era bomb

Source: AFP Published: 2020/12/7 17:38:40

Artur Lisovskis (right) and his two children get into their car early on Sunday morning to leave their residential area in the Gallus district in Hessen, Frankfurt, Germany after a 500-kilogram World War II bomb was found on a nearby construction site on Thursday. This is to be defused in the course of the day. Due to the amount of explosives and the design of the British type bomb, a large evacuation radius is required. Photo: AFP

Nearly 13,000 residents were evacuated in Frankfurt on Sunday as experts defused an unexploded World War II bomb, according to local emergency services. 

The 500-kilogram British bomb had been found on a construction site in Germany's financial capital on Thursday, the emergency services said.

It was successfully defused in less than two hours, the fire service announced on Twitter in the afternoon.

Some 12,800 residents had been asked to leave their homes in the morning and some local trains were diverted or delayed.

A 700-meter evacuation radius was set up in the west of the city center in an area that included a number of old people's homes, heating and internet infrastructure and facilities of the Deutsche Bahn national rail operator.

Authorities had said the work could take up to five hours, but "it can go very quickly if the detonator is positioned in such a way that the experts can get to it quickly," a fire service spokeswoman told AFP.

Some 75 years after the war, Germany remains littered with unexploded ordnance, often uncovered during construction work.

Earlier in 2020, experts defused seven World War II bombs found on the future location of Tesla's first European factory, just outside Berlin.

Sizeable bombs have also been defused in Cologne and Dortmund in 2020. 

In 2017, the discovery of a 1.4-ton bomb in Frankfurt prompted the evacuation of 65,000 people - the largest such operation since the end of the war in Europe in 1945.

AFP

Posted in: EUROPE

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