Four injured in Munich after second world war bomb explodes
Four people have been injured, one seriously, after a second world war bomb exploded at a bridge near Munich‘s busy main train station.
More than 2,000 tonnes of live bombs and munitions are discovered each year in Germany, more than 70 years after the end of the war.
British and American warplanes dropped 1.5m tonnes of bombs on the country, killing 600,000 people. Officials estimate that 15% of the devices failed to explode, some of which were buried 6 metres (20ft) deep in the ground.
The explosion happened as the site was being drilled to build a tunnel, police said, adding that the area had been cordoned off. “There is no danger outside this area,” they said.
Explosives experts were summoned to the site to examine the remains of the bomb, the fire brigade said. Due to the blast, rail travel to and from the station was suspended, according to the rail operator Deutsche Bahn. It was not clear when services would resume.
Second world war bombs are regularly discovered during construction work in Germany and are usually defused by experts or destroyed in controlled explosions. However, there have been cases of deadly blasts in the past.
Three police explosives experts in Göttingen were killed in 2010 while preparing to defuse a 1,000lb bomb, and in 2014 a construction worker in Euskirchen was killed when his power shovel struck a buried 4,000lb bomb. In 1994, three Berlin construction workers were killed in a similar accident.
In 2012, a fireball lit up the sky in Munich, causing millions of euros of damage to 17 buildings, when authorities detonated a deteriorated 500lb bomb. In 2015, a 1,000lb bomb ripped a 3-metre-deep hole in a motorway near Offenbach in central Germany.