An old aircraft bomb at a bridge near Munich’s busy main train station on Wednesday exploded, leaving four people injured. Police said on Twitter the number of wounded rose from three earlier to four later.
The Munich fire brigade said one of the people was seriously injured.
Even after 70 years following the end of World War Two, more than 2,000 tonnes of live bombs and munitions are discovered each year in Germany. British and American warplanes pummelled the country with 1.5 million tonnes of bombs that killed 600,000 people. 15% of the bombs failed to explode, according to the estimate by officials. Some of them were buried six meters (20 feet) deep in the ground.
The explosion happened as the site was being drilled to build a tunnel, police said, adding the area had been cordoned off.
“There is no danger outside this area,” police said, adding that explosives experts were summoned to the site to examine the remains of the bomb.
Due to the blast, rail travel to and from the main train station was suspended, according to rail operator Deutsche Bahn. It was not clear when rail traffic would resume.
World War Two bombs discovered during construction work in Germany are usually defused by experts or destroyed in controlled explosions. There have been cases of deadly blasts in the past too.
Three police explosives experts in Goettingen were killed in 2010 while preparing to defuse a 1,000-pound bomb, and in 2014 a construction worker in Euskirchen was killed when his power shovel struck a buried 4,000-pound bomb. In 1994, three Berlin construction workers were killed in a similar accident
