Thousands evacuated in WWII bomb alert
More than 20,000 residents in Nantes, one of the largest cities on France’s Atlantic coast, were evacuated from their homes today while experts defused an unexploded Allied bomb from the Second World War.
The 550lbs bomb was discovered during construction at a medical school in the centre of Nantes.
It was successfully defused and taken by truck to a military base, where it was being fully neutralised.
Police ordered all residents living in a 590yd radius of the bomb to leave their homes by this morning, but the three-hour-long operation was held up by a handful of people who refused to leave, said police in the Loire-Atlantique region.
