Eurostar trains between Paris and London and Paris and Brussels were suspended after an unexploded World War II bomb was discovered early Friday.
The bomb was described as “really huge” by a spokesperson for France’s national rail company SNCF. Hours after its discovery, train service resumed following a successful disposal operation.
“We’re delighted and relieved that all this has come to an end,” French Transport Minister Philippe Tabarot said, noting over 300 police officers mobilized to deal with the bomb.
The bomb weighed 500 kilograms, or 1,102 pounds, of which 200 kilograms, or 440 pounds, were explosives.
Construction workers discovered it around 2.5 kilometers, about 1.5 miles, outside Paris, along railway tracks in the nearby town of Saint-Denis, on a site to replace a railway bridge.
Both domestic and international travel at Paris’s busy Gare du Nord station were affected. An estimated 220 million visitors pass through the station every year.
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Eurostar, the operator of sleek high-speed trains through the Channel Tunnel that joins England with the European continent, canceled all of its services linking its Paris hub at Gare du Nord, France’s busiest rail station, to the United Kingdom and Belgium.
“There’s no reason to fear,” Tabaro told Sud Radio at the time of the suspension. “It can happen that deminers have to clear a certain number of abandoned bags sometimes. But it’s quite rare for a WWII bomb.”
