Military experts carried out a controlled explosion in Italy on Sunday to destroy a bomb from World War II that was discovered at the bottom of Italy’s Po river last month.
The bomb, which was created by the United States during World War II, had been submerged in the Po river near the village of Borgo Virgilio, which is close to the city of Mantua. However, historic heatwaves across Europe caused a drought that created water levels low enough to reveal the bomb on July 25, according to Reuters.
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Approximately 3,000 people were evacuated from the area at the time of the detonation. Bomb experts defused the explosive before transporting it to a quarry located 30 miles away. The bomb was then destroyed.
“At first, some of the inhabitants said they would not move, but in the last few days, we think we have persuaded everyone,” Borgo Virgilio’s mayor, Francesco Aporti, told Reuters. Aporti added that if people had refused to go, the detonation would have been halted.
The area’s airspace and the waterway near the explosion site were closed, and traffic on a railway line and roads nearby were also halted at the time of the detonation.
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The bomb was 1,000 pounds total and included 530 pounds of explosives, the outlet reported. Last month’s discovery was not the first of its kind. In December 2021, a WWII bomb exploded in Munich, Germany, and two other unexploded WWII bombs were discovered in Hong Kong in 2018.
Po is Italy’s longest river, stretching from the country’s section of the Alps down to the Adriatic Sea. The river accounts for approximately a third of the country’s agriculture. Italian officials declared a state of emergency on the river last month because of the drought.
