WWII bomb in central Berlin sparks evacuation

BERLIN: An unexploded World War II aerial bomb was found in central Berlin during construction work on Friday, forcing the evacuation of surrounding city blocks, police said.

A 100-kilogramme explosive was unearthed on a building site adjacent to the Alexa shopping centre at the central transport hub of Alexanderplatz in the city’s east. People were being evacuated from within a 300-metre radius of the corroded bomb, which had an intact detonator, police said.

It was not yet clear whether a police bomb disposal squad would attempt to defuse the bomb or to destroy it in a controlled explosion. Almost 75 years after the end of World War II, Germany remains littered with unexploded ordnance, a legacy of the intense Allied bombing campaign against Nazi Germany.

In the biggest post-war evacuation to date, some 60,000 Frankfurt residents were evacuated in 2017 so that an unexploded 1.8-tonne British bomb dubbed the "blockbuster" could be defused.