More than 200 people were being evacuated from part of a US Army base in Bavaria, Germany Thursday after the discovery of a 500lb unexploded World War II bomb.
The device was found by construction workers preparing to build an elementary school at the Tower Barracks in Grafenwoehr, near Nuremburg.
“The area is being evacuated so that the bomb can be defused,” said Susanne Bratsch, spokesperson for the U.S. Army Garrison Bavaria. “It will take about an hour to clear the area,” she told NBC News at about 3.30 p.m. local time (10.30 a.m. ET).
She said the evacuation did not apply to the whole of the sprawling U.S. base, home to more than 4,500 military personnel and workers. “The evacuation applies to the area defined by the explosive ordinance team,” she said.
Construction teams had been checking for unexploded devices as a matter of routine because the local area was bombed by the U.S. in April 1945.
