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Three Killed When World War II Bomb Explodes in Germany
Firefighters inspect the area where a Second World War bomb exploded, killing three people (AP)
BBC News via YellowBrix
June 02, 2010
The 500-kilogram (1,100 pound) bomb was found late yesterday under Goettingen’s Schuetzenplatz, the city’s police said in a statement late yesterday. All the dead and injured were in the process of removing the explosive.
“Suddenly there was a muffled blast,” Goettingen fire department official Frank Gloth told broadcaster ZDF today, adding that the ordnance was discovered at a sports-stadium construction site. The bomb exploded “without warning.”
Police are examining how the bomb went off as experts were preparing to defuse it, Goettingen police chief Robert Kruse told reporters. The three men who died were specialists who had long experience in handling wartime ordinance, he said.
The same team had found and deactivated a similar bomb last week at the same construction site, Kruse said at a press conference in Goettingen broadcast live.
U.S. and British aerial bombs are routinely unearthed on German construction sites 65 years after the end of the war. Police in Berlin’s Zehlendorf district last week evacuated a neighborhood after diggers found a 500-kilogram American bomb. The residents were able to return after the explosive was defused.
