Bomb Dropped From Aircraft During WWII Just Exploded

4 injured in Munich blast
By Newser Editors and Wire Services
Posted Dec 1, 2021 2:15 PM CST
WWII Bomb Injures 4 in Munich
Firefighters, police officers and railway employees stand on a railway site in Munich, Germany, Wednesday, Dec. 1, 2021.   (Sven Hoppe/dpa via AP)

A World War II bomb exploded at a construction site next to a busy railway line in Munich on Wednesday, injuring four people, one of them seriously, German authorities said. A column of smoke was seen rising from the site near the Donnersbergerbruecke station, the AP reports, with the Wall Street Journal describing the bomb as weighing 550 pounds and having been dropped from an aircraft during the war. The construction site for a new commuter train line is located on the approach to Munich's central station, which is around half a mile to the east. Trains to and from that station, one of Germany's busiest, were suspended but service resumed in mid-afternoon. A few local trains were evacuated. The fire service said there was no damage to the tracks.

Unexploded bombs are still found frequently in Germany, even 76 years after the end of the war, and often during work on construction sites. They are usually defused or disposed of in controlled explosions, a process that sometimes entails large-scale evacuations as a precaution. Bavaria's state interior minister, Joachim Herrmann, said the bomb was found during drilling work, according to German news agency dpa. Herrmann said authorities must now investigate why it wasn't discovered earlier. He noted that such construction sites are usually scanned carefully in advance for possible unexploded bombs.

(More World War II stories.)

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