via dw.com - Thousands of residents were forced to evacuate a Frankfurt district on Sunday before experts started to defuse a huge World War II-era bomb found at a construction site earlier in the week.
Authorities cleared nearly 60,000 people from a 1.5 kilometer (0.57 square mile) area in the Westend district, warning that the 1.8 metric ton (4,000-pound) bomb could flatten an entire block if it exploded.
By 3 p.m. local time (1300 UTC) police reported that one fuse had been successfully removed from the device.
Ambulances and transport vehicles also helped move the elderly and sick from the area, which includes two hospitals and Germany's central bank.
The city's trade fair is being used as a temporary shelter during the estimated four-hour bomb defusing operation.
The bomb is believed to be a British bomb dating back to Allied raids on the city.
Such evacuations are common in Germany, where Allied air forces dropped 1.5 million tons of bombs that killed 600,000 people and flattened cities. An estimated 10 percent of the bombs failed to explode.
In December last year, a British 1.8 metric ton blockbuster bomb was found in Augsburg. More than 54,000 people had to leave their homes on Christmas Day while it was defused.
That to date was the largest evacuation since the end of World War II more than 70 years ago.
On Saturday, about 20,000 residents in Koblenz were evacuated to allow experts to defuse a half ton US bomb. (ontinueReading
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