Wednesday: 500-kilogram bomb to be defused, affecting 4,700 people

A 500-kilogram bomb buried about 6.5 metres underground is set to be defused on Wednesday in Lehnitz, near Oranienburg, forcing nearly 4,700 people to leave their homes.

The city administration plans to impose a 1,000-metre exclusion zone around the site from 8 a.m. The area must remain clear until the operation ends. It includes residential buildings, a primary school, a kindergarten and after-school centre, a secondary school, a senior housing facility and a community accommodation centre.

The operation will also disrupt transport. S-Bahn trains will run normally between 8 a.m. and 10 a.m. but will not stop at Lehnitz station. After that, line S1 trains will run only to and from Birkenwerder. Borgsdorf station will also remain closed for as long as the exclusion zone is in place.

Authorities found the American-designed bomb during a systematic search for unexploded wartime ordnance. The city said it carries “an intact chemical long-delay fuse.” Oranienburg is particularly affected by such bombs because soil conditions during World War II meant that many devices failed to explode. The region is believed to contain a large number of unexploded bombs, and a German Interior Ministry spokesman previously said no other area in the country was known to face a comparable concentration of bombs with chemical long-delay fuses.