Breathe a sigh of relief in the capital: A World War II bomb has been defused in East Berlin. The discovery disrupted rail traffic for several hours, and thousands had to leave their homes.
After three hours of work, a bomb from the Second World War has been defused in Berlin. Thousands of residents were allowed to return to their apartments in the Friedrichshain district during the night. The local and long-distance traffic in the east of the capital was able to roll again without gaps after an interruption of several hours. S-Bahn trains, buses, regional and long-distance trains and ships were affected. The airspace above the affected area was also temporarily closed. “The closures in Friedrichshain have been lifted,” said the police on Twitter at around 12:20 a.m.
The 500-kilogram dud was discovered on Thursday around 11:45 a.m. during construction work between the Spree and the large Ostkreuz transfer station. A 500-metre exclusion zone around the site was set up. Around 12,000 people had to leave the area over the course of several hours. Three day care centers were also cleared.
The police were on Thursday afternoon with two loudspeaker vans. 250 police officers took care of the road closures and went from door to door. On Twitter, people were asked to leave the area on their own. Emergency accommodation was set up in the Mercedes-Benz Arena with a separate room for people who had tested positive for the corona virus, it said.
Shortly after midnight, the police tweeted: “Our specialists from the LKA removed both detonators with the – you will guess – high-pressure water jet cutting machine and blew them up on site.” The remains of the bomb were to be taken to the Grunewald police detonation site, where a fire with numerous explosions broke out on August 4. On Wednesday, however, the police announced that controlled demolitions would again be carried out at the detonation site for clean-up purposes.
In Germany, thousands of people have to leave their homes again and again because bombs are being defused. In Göttingen there were 20,000 last October, and a few months earlier in Frankfurt am Main even 25,000.
