WWII bomb found at gas station in Cologne
December 18, 2018
Over 1,000 people are being evacuated from their homes in Cologne, Germany, after a World War Two bomb was found behind a gas station on Tuesday morning.
The American 5-hundredweight (225-kilogram) unexploded bomb was found during excavation work in the southern suburb of Cologne-Poll.
"The bomb is right here, just behind our building," a petrol station worker told local website TAG 24 Köln.
Public order officials rushed to close off everything within a 300-meter (980-foot) radius of the device just after 12 p.m. local time (1100 UTC). The city administration announced at around 3:30 p.m. that experts had begun defusing the bomb.
"An American 5-hundredweight bomb with an impact fuse was discovered directly behind a petrol station building during digging on the plot at Siegburger Strasse 504 on Tuesday morning, Dec. 18, 2018," the city said in a statement.
It has set up a temporary shelter for effected people in a high school.
Frequent finds in German cities
Unexploded World War Two bombs are still regularly unearthed by construction workers in Germany, especially in major western cities like Cologne, 70 years after the end of the conflict.
Cologne was bombed in 262 separate air raids by the Allies during the war.
Read more: German drives WWII bomb to fire station
Cologne-Poll was the site of another evacuation involving thousands of people less than three weeks ago, after a 1,000 kg bomb was found in the area.
On December 14, another US bomb was found in the Braunsfeld district of the city, leading to an evacuation affecting 8,000 people while it was defused.