‘All clear’ in Koblenz as giant bomb defused

A MASSIVE Second World War era British bomb that triggered the evacuation of about half of the 107,000 residents of Germany’s western city of Koblenz was successfully defused yesterday, authorities said.

It was one of Germany’s biggest bomb-related evacuations since the war ended, with some 2,500 police officers, firefighters and paramedics on duty across the city to secure the operation.

Experts successfully defused the 1.8-tonne bomb, which was discovered last month after the Rhine river’s water level fell due to a prolonged lack of rain, said Heiko Breitbarth, a spokesman for Koblenz’s firefighters.

About 45,000 residents, living within a one-mile radius of the bomb site, had to leave their homes early yesterday before the evacuation order was lifted in the evening, the city said. The British bomb could have caused massive damage had it exploded.

“I did my job, that was all,” lead defusing expert Horst Lenz told the Rhein Zeitung newspaper.

The residents of Koblenz, which was heavily bombed during the Second World War, are used to bomb scares.

City officials said 28 smaller war-era bombs had been found there since 1999. Such bombs are often found during construction work or by farmers ploughing fields.

Separately, 200 people had to be evacuated from the southern German city of Nuremberg as experts there defused another bomb left from the war. The 155lb bomb of unknown origin was defused in 15 minutes.