45,000 evacuated as bomb defused

NEARLY half of the 107,000 residents of Germany’s western city of Koblenz had to leave their homes as experts defused a 1.8-tonne Second World War-era bomb discovered in the River Rhine.

In one of Germany’s biggest bomb-related evacuations since the war, some 2,500 police officers, firefighters and paramedics were on duty across the city to secure the operation.

Authorities set up shelters in parts of Koblenz further away from the bomb site, and shuttle buses were on hand in the morning to carry residents to safety.