World War II bomb explodes underwater in Poland as navy attempts to defuse it [WATCH]
The explosion took place when the demolition experts of the Polish navy were trying to neutralize the bomb using remote deflagration.
The WWII bomb weighed 5.4 tons was found in September 2019 underneath a waterway leading to Poland’s Szczecin port. However, the bomb was neither inspected nor defused immediately after the discovery.
After more than a year of its discovery, the naval demolition experts tried to defuse it on October 15, 2020. The video showed a huge underwater explosion after the bomb went off after not being lifted successfully.
However, the bomb was not lifted successfully as it went off, causing a huge underwater explosion. Nobody was hurt in the incident but Lieutenant Commander Grzegorz Lewandowski said things could’ve been much worse.
Divers were at a safe as the bomb was being defused through remote deflagration. However, more than 750 local residents had to be evacuated from the area near Piast Canal before the operation.
The authorities also imposed a 2.4 km exclusion zone around the bomb.
Poland has been searching and dismantling remnant weapons of World War II since the end of the war, according to a report by the Magazine of The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. The report states that between 1944 and1989, unexploded weapons caused the lives of 4,094 people in Poland. From 1944 to 2003, 96 million pieces of explosive artillery have been removed at an estimated cost of more than six thousand crore rupees. The bomb in the viral video had failed to explode when it was dropped over Poland during the second World War.
