WWII grenade found in house clear-out

A man cleaning out a house in southern Austria made a jarring discovery: a live Second World War hand grenade with the pin removed and replaced with a piece of wire.

The man, whose name was not released, found the grenade as he was removing rubbish from a home in the city of Graz, about 125 miles south of Vienna, police said.

A bomb squad was called to the scene and found that the grenade’s pin had been removed and the only thing keeping it from exploding was a small, “unprofessionally secured” length of wire, officials said in a statement.

Experts removed and detonated the grenade and no one was injured.

Bombs, mines, grenades and other Second World War-era ordnance left behind by Austria’s Nazi occupiers and Allied forces are regularly found around the country.