3 Bombs of the Second World War defused in the largest evacuation of a German city since the end of the war

Three non -exploded American bombs of the Second World War were defused on Wednesday in Cologne after the largest evacuation of the German city since the end of the war.

The bombs were discovered Monday during preparatory work for the construction of roads. City authorities said that the unploded ammunition discovered were two 20 -ton American bombs and an American 10 -ton bomb each with impact fuses.

More than 20,000 residents were evacuated Wednesday from the city center. Experts defused the bombs in less than an hour, the city authorities said in a statement.

Even 80 years after the end of the war, unploded bombs have dropped during the air raids in wartime are frequently found in Germany. Sometimes, large -scale precautionary evacuations are necessary. This time, the location was unusually prominent – just opposite the Rhine river of the historic center of Cologne.

Significantly greater evacuations have occurred in other German cities.

The evacuations included houses, 58 hotels, nine schools, a hospital and two nursing homes, several museums and office buildings and the Messe / Deutz station. It also included three bridges across the Rhine, including the highly used Hohenzollern railway bridge, which leads to Cologne central station. The shipment to the Rhine was also suspended.

The authorization to move forward with defusing the bombs was somewhat delayed because a person in the historic center initially refused to leave their home, the city authorities said.

Bombs of the Second World War were discovered on the battlefields and the cities where the fighting took place, often decades after the end of the war. In March, a bomb of the Second World War was found Near the slopes of the Paris Gare de Nord. In February, more than 170 bombs were find Near a children’s playground in the north of England. And in October 2024, a bomb of the Second World War exploded at a Japanese airport.