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Berlin airport closed for World War Two bomb blast

Posted on: Wednesday, 14 September 2005, 10:45 CDT

BERLIN (Reuters) - Berlin's Tegel airport was temporarily closed on Wednesday to allow the controlled explosion of a 1,000-pound (454 kg) U.S. World War Two bomb unearthed during construction work, police said.

A flight carrying U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, in the German capital for a NATO defense ministers' meeting, took off from Tegel shortly before the airport was closed, U.S. officials said.

Takeoffs and landings at the airport, one of Germany's busiest, were suspended for about an hour, an adjacent highway was closed, trains on a nearby subway line were halted and local people evacuated from the area, police said.

Scores of unexploded bombs dropped by U.S. and British aircraft during World War Two are found in Germany each year.

(Additional reporting by Mark John in Berlin)

Source: REUTERS

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