WWII bomb disposal operation in Paris causes hours of travel chaos and Eurostar line closure

The disposal of what Paris police called an “excessively dangerous” unexploded World War II bomb caused hours of transportation chaos Friday on rail and road networks in the French capital, including the suspension of high-speed train links with London and Brussels.

Having moved the bomb into a hole, disposal experts managed to unscrew and then destroy its fuse, “like you see in the movies,” said Christophe Pezron, who heads the Paris police laboratory that includes bomb disposal services. He said that the half-ton British-made bomb could have caused major damage had it exploded after workers inadvertently dug it up with an earthmover.

But the police operation that made the bomb safe before it was then taken away triggered major disruption for hundreds of thousands of rail travelers and motorists.

The bomb was dug up near train tracks north of Paris, forcing a shutdown of the rail network serving Gare du Nord, France’s busiest station. A portion of the A1 highway — a major road artery into northern Paris — and sections of the capital’s always-busy beltway were also closed while police disposal officers worked.

“We’re delighted and relieved that all this has come to an end,” Transport Minister Philippe Tabarot was able to finally declare Friday afternoon — 12 hours after the bomb-disposal police were first called — as roads reopened and rail services were progressively being restored.

The minister said that almost 500 trains had been canceled, impacting around 600,000 people at Gare du Nord that serves not only Paris’ northern suburbs and northern France, but also international destinations in the U.K., Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany.

“All of the northern part of our country was paralyzed,” Tabarot said.

Eurostar, the operator of high-speed trains through the Channel Tunnel that joins England with the European continent, said that normal traffic would resume Saturday between Paris and Brussels and Paris and London, after Friday’s full day of cancellations. Hundreds of commuter, regional and high-speed train services between Paris and its suburbs and towns and cities in northern France were also canceled.

Travel plans thrown into disarray

Gabrielle Cotton, a tourist from the U.S. state of Missouri, was traveling by train from Amsterdam, Netherlands, to Paris, but got no further than Brussels.

“I heard the girl next to me — her parents called her and said that there was a World War II bomb found in the train station,” she said. “They told us we had to get off in Brussels.”

Retired Parisian Michel Garrot also found himself stranded with his wife in the Belgian capital.

“There’s no solution. We’re going to call the hotel and stay one more day. And change our train ticket,” he said.

At Eurostar’s hub in London, St. Pancras International station, passengers scrambled for alternatives. Fridays are invariably busy with thousands of weekend travelers. Paris-bound passengers were advised to try taking trains to Lille in northern France, or fly.

Bride-to-be Charlotte Liddell had a bachelorette party — her own — to get to in Paris and wanted to join friends already in the French capital.

“It’s the hen do without the hen!” she said. “We’re very upset, but it’s so out of our control.”

Eurostar said that it “sincerely apologizes for the disruption and understands the inconvenience this may cause.”

The bomb was dug up overnight

Workers laboring overnight on a bridge-replacement project spotted the rust-eaten, dirt-covered bomb before dawn Friday, after it was found by an earth-moving machine at a depth of about two meters (six feet), between train tracks to the north of Gare du Nord, national rail operator SNCF said.

Bomb disposal services arrived within the hour and set up a 200-meter security perimeter, later extended to 500 meters. Pezron, the police lab director, said that the bomb could have exploded had it been struck accidentally with workers’ tools or shaken too vigorously.

Morning rush-hour travelers arriving at Gare du Nord to catch trains were greeted by bright-red signs warning of disruptions, lines of passengers seeking information and ticket exchanges, and barriers blocking access to the Eurostar terminal.

The Gare du Nord habitually hosts 700,000 travelers per day, making it the busiest rail hub in both France and Europe, the SNCF says.

Deadly legacies of World War I and II

Bombs left over from the battles fought in France and its skies in both world wars are regularly unearthed, even more than a century later, although it’s rare that they cause such widespread disruption in people-packed Paris.

“It’s the fourth one we’ve found in this area since 2019,” Pezron said.

In World War II, Allied forces’ bombing raids flattened towns and cities in the Normandy region northwest of Paris, but didn’t wreak destruction on the same scale on the French capital. Still, factories, train lines and other targets in and around Paris were bombed repeatedly, killing more than 3,600 people and wounding thousands more, according to city archives.

The Interior Ministry says that since World War II’s end in 1945, disposal teams have defused 700,000 air-dropped bombs and made safe nearly 50 million mines, shells and other explosive devices.

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Alex Turnbull in Paris, Sylvie Corbet in Brussels, and Jill Lawless in London, contributed to this report.