Some 600 people were evacuated from their homes in the old city of Frankfurt on Sunday so specialists could remove a World War II-era bomb that was discovered in the Main River.
The German news agency dpa reported the bomb was defused, as planned, underwater, which led to a loud detonation and a big water fountain on the river. Police told dpa “the bomb is no longer a danger.”
Firefighters had discovered the American 250-kilogram (550-pound) bomb during diving training in the river last Tuesday.
Even more than 70 years after the end of the war, bombs and other munitions still turn up regularly in Germany, a testament to the ferocity of the fighting in World War II.
In the biggest post-war evacuation to date, some 60,000 Frankfurt residents were evacuated in 2017 so that an unexploded 1.8-ton British bomb dubbed the “blockbuster” could be defused.
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Last August, 18,500 people in the city of Ludwigshafen were evacuated to allow for the defusion of a 500-kilogram (1,100-pound) aerial bomb thought to have been dropped by American forces.
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