13000 residents evacuate in Germany after discovery of WWII bomb
2 Min Read
The bomb was found by the fire department in Duesseldorf city and is to be diffused overnight.
-
Apartment blocks are pictured in Duesseldorf, Germany, Wednesday, June 28, 2023 (AP Photo/Martin Meissner)
Around 13,000 people have been warned to temporarily leave their houses in the western German city of Duesseldorf after a Second World War-era US bomb was found, firemen said Monday.
The one-ton bomb, which was made in the United States, was to be defused overnight after it was found during work in the vicinity of the city zoo, according to the fire department.
A 500-meter radius around the bomb's discovery has been blocked off by police.
Seventy-eight years after WWII, the ground in German towns is still littered with unexploded ordnance that is frequently found on construction sites.
A 1.4-ton bomb was found in Frankfurt in 2017, forcing the evacuation of 65,000 people.
A bomb from the Second World War detonated in December 2021 at a building site next to Munich station, wounding four persons and halting rail service.
In April, 15,000 civilians in the German city of Dresden were evacuated after discovering an unexploded American bomb ranging back to the second world war, according to German police.
Around the end of the second world war, Dresden which was predominantly civilian-populated was unnecessarily brutally bombed by Americans and the British on the Western front, when Berlin was already underway to be liberated by the Red Army and the war had already been won. In only a few hours, three waves of bombers leveled almost half the city, killing 250,000 people, most of whom were civilians.
