More than 50,000 people had to evacuate their homes in Brindisi in the south of Italy on Sunday, as experts removed a second world war British bomb.
The British bomb, uncovered by construction workers on 2 November during refurbishment works at a cinema, is believed to have been dropped on the port city in 1941.
The Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera described the operation as “the biggest peacetime evacuation in the country” as more than 54,000 inhabitants were forced to leave their homes for several hours on Sunday morning, within a radius of 1,617 metres from where the bomb was found.
As part of the operation, the city’s airport, train station, two hospitals and a prison were shut down. More than 200 inmates were moved to the prison in Lecce, 38km away.
At about 1pm, authorities confirmed that experts had successfully defused the explosive, which is 1 metre long and contains 40kg of dynamite.
Authorities said that on Monday they will take the bomb to a remote location for a controlled explosion.
On 1 December, more than 10,000 residents of Turin were evacuated for the defusal of another British bomb from the second world war, dropped on the city more than 70 years ago. Previously, on 19 October, authorities ordered about 4,000 people living near Piazza Verdi in the northern city of Bolzano to leave their homes for several hours after a second world war explosive was discovered in the city centre.
Unexploded ordnances are still a problem throughout Italy, especially near the border with Austria, where most of the undiscovered ones are believed to be.
In July, the Italian newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano reported that at least 10 unexploded bombs dropped by the Allies are still hidden within the foundations of the archaeological site of Pompeii.
In August 1943, Allied air forces dropped 165 bombs on Pompeii, in nine different air raids. The bombs were dropped on 24 August 1943, the same day in AD79 on which the ancient city was formerly believed to have been destroyed by an eruption of Mount Vesuvius. In October 2018, however, a newly discovered inscription in the city proved that it was destroyed after 17 October in AD79, and not on 24 August, as previously thought.
According to statistics from the Italian defence ministry, thousands of second world war bombs are defused in the country every year.
