An operation to defuse an unexploded British bomb from World
War Two in Germany’s Augsburg, where 54,000 people were forced out of their
homes, was ended in success after 11 hours of work.
The huge operation to defuse a British bomb on Dec. 25 in
Germany’s southern city of Augsburg took 11 hours, involved 900 police officers
and it ended successfully around 6:00 p.m. GMT, local authorities announced,
according to AFP.
A total of 54,000 people were forced out of their homes in
Germany on Christmas Day which became to be the country’s biggest such evacuation
since the end of hostilities.
The 1.8-tonne explosive was found on Dec. 20 during work at
a construction site in the Bavarian city, but authorities waited until Dec. 25
to coordinate the logistics necessary to make it safe.
More than 70 years after the end of the war, unexploded
bombs are regularly found buried on German land, legacies of the intense
bombing campaigns by the Allied forces against Nazi Germany.
Augsburg, the third-largest city in Bavaria, was targeted
several times during the war.
A 1,500-metre exclusion zone was created for the operation
in case the bomb exploded while engineers were trying to deactivate it and sandbags
were set up all around.
Two experts defused the explosive, which was described as a
“mega bomb” according to police spokesman Manfred Gottschalk cited by DPA news
agency.
Police checked house by house to ensure they were clear of
residents before giving the go ahead.
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