About 30,000 residents of the city of Pforzheim in southwestern Germany have been evacuated due to a World War II-era aerial bomb. The incident occurred today, May 17, according to the Deutsche Presse-Agentur (DPA).
Local police issued a statement indicating that approximately 30,000 people were instructed to evacuate their homes. This was due to the discovery of an unexploded 4,000-pound (1,800-kilogram) aerial bomb.
The bomb was discovered during construction work in the eastern part of the city. Authorities plan to defuse the bomb today; currently, fire department personnel are verifying that all residents have left the evacuation zone.
City authorities have established a restricted access zone with a radius of 1.5 kilometers. The evacuation zone covers part of the city center. The incident has also disrupted some public transportation services.
According to a statement from the authorities, the bomb contains approximately 1.35 tons of explosives.
According to information from open sources, Soviet aircraft systematically bombed Pforzheim during World War II. The raids were justified by the fact that the city is a major center for the production of precision instruments.
The heaviest bombing of the city is considered to be the Allied air raid on February 23, 1945, when 379 aircraft dropped 1,800 tons of bombs. The central part of the city was completely destroyed at that time.
Pforzheim in 1946. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
As the Ukrainian News agency earlier reported, on March 11 in the Lviv Region, an unexploded World War II-era aerial bomb was discovered in the courtyard of a school.
And in May 2025, a mortar shell that had been lying there since World War II was found on the grounds of a kindergarten in Kyiv.
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