By Commuter traffic at one of France’s busiest train stations came to a complete halt Friday morning after workers discovered an unexploded World War II bomb under the tracks north of Paris’ Gare du Nord.
French Transport Minister Philippe Tabarot told broadcaster Sud Radio that travel throughout the day was expected to be “strongly disrupted,” urging travelers to postpone their trips.
By Friday afternoon, train services and roads began reopening after the bomb was successfully disposed.
Tabarot said there was “no fear” or risk of an explosion, stressing that procedures were in place for defusing and removing such bombs.
The incident disrupted all train services, including local metros, commuter rails, and national and international train services.
Workers found the World War II bomb under the tracks about a mile and a half north of Paris’ Gare du Nord station.Geoffroy Van Der Hasselt / AFP via Getty Images
Eurostar confirmed to NBC News that it had canceled trains to and from Paris, including those to London, Brussels and Amsterdam, until the police had completed its “mine clearance operations” and safely disposed of the bomb.
The European train operator encouraged all passengers Friday morning to travel on another day, later adding that they could exchange their tickets for free to travel at a different time or date in the same travel class.
Trains between London and Amsterdam, London and Brussels, and Brussels and Marne La Vallée near Paris were running normally, Eurostar added.
Gare du Nord station in Paris on Friday.Geoffroy Van Der Hasselt / AFP – Getty Images
Workers removing dirt uncovered the unexploded bomb in the train tracks in the Seine-Saint-Denis region, about a mile and a half north of Gare du Nord, at around 4 a.m. local time, according to a post on X by the H line, one of the trains operated by the French National Railways.
Police cleared the area and cordoned off the site shortly after.
Just before 5 a.m. local time, the RER-B train line posted on X that “the bomb disposal experts have just arrived to secure the area and evacuate the elements.”
Unexploded bombs dating back to World War I and II are regularly discovered around France.
In 2019, a bomb weighing nearly a thousand pounds was found at a construction site at Porte de la Chapelle, near the Gare du Nord, causing temporary disruption to Eurostar trains and the evacuation of almost 2,000 people.
The French authorities later determined that the bomb was likely dropped by the British Royal Air Force in April 1944, targeting Nazi-occupied Paris before the D-Day landings in Normandy, according to the British newspaper, The Telegraph.
