This website uses cookies to give our readers the best website experience. Please refer to our privacy policy to find out how we use cookies and how you can edit your preferences Essential digital access to quality FT journalism on any device Complete digital access to quality FT journalism with expert analysis from industry leaders Complete digital access to quality analysis and expert insights complemented with our award-winning Weekend Print edition Terms & Conditions apply Discover all the plans currently available in your country See why over a million readers pay to read the Financial Times The Local Europe ABVästmannagatan 43113 25 StockholmSweden A World War II bomb found along train tracks near Paris’s Gare du Nord paralysed rail travel in and out of the capital on Friday The device, which weighed 500kg, according to AFP reporting, prompted the cancellation of rail services The shell was presumably dropped by Allied bombers in the lead-up to the Normandy invasion of 1944 when the entire French rail network was a key target The two World Wars have left their scars on France – and some have yet to be found READ MORE: Why does France still have so many WWII bunkers on its coast? Since 1945, when coordinated mine-clearing operations began, the French Ministry of the Interior reported in a 2024 announcement that 700,000 aircraft bombs have been defused and 35 million shells and other devices neutralised or destroyed Nevertheless, according to a Senate report dating back to 2001 “a quarter of the billion shells fired during the First World War and a tenth of the shells fired during the Second World War did not explode during these conflicts” It doesn’t take a mathematician to work out what historian Olivier Saint-Hilaire told 20 Minutes: “It is likely that hundreds of millions of war devices are still buried in our soil.” 500 tonnes of munitions are neutralised by mine clearance services About 90 percent of them are bombs and other explosives from the First World War but more dangerous chemical shells may also be found a woman in the Aisne département suffered lower-limb injuries when a wartime grenade she had handled exploded But fatalities these days caused by wartime ordnance are rare a shell killed a young person on a beach on île de Groix READ ALSO French government cracks down on magnet fishing over fears of WWII bombs Bomb disposal experts from the capital’s Laboratoire central de la préfecture de Police were dispatched to make safe the device found near Gare du Nord the responsibility for this dangerous work falls to the Groupement d'intervention du déminage (GID) It was created at the end of the Second World War by General de Gaulle French cities that endured heavy bombing during the wars have been most affected estuaries and in the seas surrounding France in addition to industrial zones in northern France and along railway lines As for the Paris region - between 1940 and 1944 there were a total of 12 separate attacks on the capital's suburbs as the allies sought to wipe out key industrial and railway sites controlled by the Germans Many of these strategic sites were located in the north of Paris 15th and 16th arrondissements were also hit The railways around the Paris suburbs were also targeted due to their importance to the Germans for being able to deport people to Nazi Germany, a historian told French daily Le Parisien In 2020, roads in the north of Paris were closed after the discovery of a bomb dating back to the Second World War Paris and its surrounding suburbs were also bombed during previous conflicts an estimated 7,000 to 10,000 shells fell on Paris historians have noted that bombs the Second World War have had the largest impact The rest came from the Germans," the head of the interdepartmental mine clearance service of Versailles told Le Parisien other parts of France have also been affected READ ALSO French lake still riddled with bombs 80 years after World War II Just a few months ago, in November 2024, 4,000 people in Annecy in eastern France had to be evacuated so that a WWII bomb could be dealt with some 4,500 people were evacuated in the Vaise district of Lyon so a 230kg wartime shell could be defused safely a mine clearance operation involved the evacuation of 1,800 residents in La Ricamarie around 2,300 residents of a district of Saint-Nazaire had been evacuated for the same reason residents of Boulogne-sur-Mer (Pas-de-Calais) were confined at home while a large bomb was made safe Please log in to leave a comment This website uses cookies to give our readers the best website experience. Please refer to our privacy policy to find out how we use cookies and how you can edit your preferences.