3 Second World War bombs are defused in a German city’s biggest postwar evacuation

One of the three unexploded bombs from the Second World War is fenced off with screens as specialists prepare to defuse them in Cologne, Tuesday, June 3, 2025. (Thomas Banneyer/dpa via AP)

COLOGNE, Germany — Three unexploded U.S. bombs from World War II were defused on Wednesday in Cologne after the German city’s biggest evacuation since the end of the war.

More than 20,000 residents were evacuated from the city center earlier Wednesday after the bombs were unearthed on Monday during preparatory work for road construction.

Experts defused the bombs within about an hour, city authorities said in a statement.

Even 80 years after the end of the war, unexploded bombs dropped during wartime air raids are frequently found in Germany. Sometimes, large-scale precautionary evacuations are needed. The location this time was unusually prominent — just across the Rhine River from Cologne’s historic center.

Significantly bigger evacuations have occurred in other German cities.

The evacuations included homes, 58 hotels, nine schools, a hospital and two nursing homes, several museums and office buildings and the Messe/Deutz train station. It also included three bridges across the Rhine, including the heavily used Hohenzollern railway bridge, which leads into Cologne’s central station. Shipping on the Rhine also was suspended.

Clearance to go ahead with defusing the bombs was delayed somewhat because one person refused in the historic center initially refused to leave their home, city authorities said.