(PresidentialWire.com)- Four people were injured in Munich last Wednesday when an old aircraft bomb from World War Two exploded at a bridge near the main train station. One of those injured was in serious condition.
More than 70 years since the end of the Second World War, over two thousand tons of live bombs and munitions are still discovered in Germany each year. British and American warplanes hammered the country with 1.5 million tons of bombs. Officials estimate that of those, 15 percent failed to explode on impact. Some of the unexploded bombs ended up buried as much as twenty feet into the ground.
The explosion in Munich occurred near the Donnersbergerbruecke train station where workers were drilling a tunnel for a new commuter train line.
Donnersbergerbruecke is Germany’s busiest train station. A few local trains were evacuated and all train service was suspended. Explosive experts were brought in to examine the remains of the bomb. Once the fire service confirmed there was no damage to the tracks, service at the station resumed by mid-afternoon.
It is not uncommon for unexploded World War Two bombs to be discovered during construction work in Germany. Most are defused on-site or destroyed in controlled explosions. However, there have been incidents of deadly explosions.
In 2010, three police explosives experts were killed in Goettingen while preparing to defuse a 1,000-pound bomb. In 2014, a construction worker in Euskirchen was killed when his power shovel struck a buried 4,000-pound bomb. In a similar incident in 1994, three Berlin construction workers were killed when an unexploded bomb was struck.
In another incident in Munich in 2012, a fireball lit up the sky when authorities had to detonate a deteriorated 500-pound bomb. The explosion caused millions of euros in damage to seventeen area buildings. In 2015, a 1000-pound bomb exploded near Offenbach in central Germany creating a three-meter-deep hole in the middle of a motorway.
