Around 20,000 people are being evacuated from their homes in the German city of Cologne as experts try to defuse three World War II bombs.

This is the largest post-war evacuation in the city and comes after the discovery of two 1,000 kg and one 500 kg American devices on Monday, foreign media write, according to Telegraph.

The size of the bombs means that a 1,000-meter danger zone must be cordoned off and sealed off.

Officials have been going door to door checking whether businesses and homes in the Old Town and Deutz areas of Cologne are empty.

Nine schools, 58 hotels, a hospital, the main town hall and the area near the famous Cologne Cathedral, which is listed on UNESCO, are among the many places temporarily banned.

Two shelters have been set up for those affected.

It is reported that 1.5 million bombs were dropped on Cologne during World War II, and experts estimate that around 20% of them did not fully explode.

Some of these so-called “unexploded bombs” still lie under the streets and have caused numerous evacuations over the years.

In 2024, 31 bombs were found in the city, requiring 17 evacuations, affecting more than 36,000 people.

City officials have told Sky News that the plan is to try to defuse the bombs.

If this is not possible, then another option would be to safely detonate them.

Authorities hope that if all goes according to plan, bomb disposal experts will be able to defuse them in time to allow people to return to their homes by Wednesday evening.

Over 20,000 Cologne residents were evacuated to defuse three WWII bombs, marking the city’s largest evacuation since 1945 due to safety concerns.

apnews.com

In a significant evacuation effort, over 20,000 residents are being relocated from Cologne’s city center as specialists prepare to defuse three unexploded U.S. bombs from World War II. This operation, taking place on June 4, 2025, underscores the ongoing challenges Germany faces with wartime remnants.

6 Key Takeaways Over 20,000 residents evacuated in Cologne

Three WWII unexploded bombs discovered

Largest evacuation since 1945 in Cologne

Area includes hotels, schools, and museums

Rhine River shipping suspended during defusal

Bomb defusal timing depends on evacuation completion

Despite the war ending 80 years ago, unexploded bombs continue to surface, necessitating large-scale evacuations. This marks Cologne’s largest evacuation since 1945, highlighting the historical impact of the war on modern urban life.

Fast Answer: Over 20,000 residents in Cologne are evacuated as authorities prepare to defuse World War II bombs, reflecting ongoing global concerns about unexploded ordnance.

This incident raises questions about urban safety and historical legacies. How prepared are cities to handle such discoveries? The situation serves as a reminder of the lasting effects of conflict on contemporary communities.

Over 20,500 residents evacuated from a 1,000-meter radius.

Cologne’s evacuation is the largest since World War II.

Authorities are ensuring safety before bomb defusal.

Shipping and transport routes are temporarily suspended.

The discovery of unexploded ordnance in urban areas poses ongoing risks, emphasizing the need for vigilance and preparedness in cities worldwide.

As cities continue to grow and develop, it’s crucial to remain aware of historical remnants. Communities must prioritize safety and preparedness to mitigate risks associated with unexploded bombs.

Madrid’s ghost towns revived as Spain’s housing crisis escalates

SESENA, Spain: The first call came two minutes after estate agent Segis Gomez posted a listing in Sesena, a development near Madrid that gained notoriety as one of the so-called “ghost towns” created when Spain’s property bubble burst in 2008.

Half-built and half-empty for more than a decade, these days the squatters have gone from this development 40 kilometers south of the capital and middle-class families, driven out of the city center by an acute housing crisis, are moving in. Construction, meanwhile, has restarted.

Demand is so strong in Sesena that Gomez has a waiting list of 70 people for each property. Property prices have recovered their original value after plunging to less than half during the crisis, he said.

As anger grows over the cost of housing in Spain, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has made providing affordable homes one of his main goals – even as he encourages population growth through immigration. The size of the challenge is clear in Madrid, which grew by 140,000 people in 2024, but only registered permits to build 20,000 new homes.

Short supply is being exacerbated by a boom in holiday lets, record migration and onerous planning laws.

“The problem is that we can’t match supply and demand quickly enough. So prices go up, or people have to trade price for distance,” said Carles Vergara, a real estate professor at IESE Business School in Madrid.

Sesena has been adopted as a commuter town as Madrid overflows, even though it is located in the neighboring Castile-La Mancha region and still lacks good transport links to the capital and public services, which caused homebuyers to reject it in the past.

Its founder and original developer, Francisco Hernando, had a vision of 13,000 affordable apartments with gardens and swimming pools on the Spanish plain where author Cervantes set his best-known work Don Quixote, but the project became a byword for speculative greed and corruption. Only 5,000 homes ended up being built. Hernando, who began his project in 2004, failed to tell homebuyers he hadn’t secured access to water or that the town had no public transport or schools. Hernando died in 2020.

When the market collapsed, initial investors saw the value of their property plummet, while many homes ended up in the hands of banks.

Madrid’s expansion

Today, Sesena teems with life as parents drop children at its three schools, drink coffee in its bars and visit recently-opened gyms and pharmacies. Impact Homes, a developer, is constructing 156 one-to-four bedroom apartments it expects to complete this year. Next door, another building has already pre-sold 49 percent of its units, it said in an email. “Sesena is at 100 percent,” said Jaime de Hita, the town’s mayor.

Nestor Delgado moved to Sesena in 2021 with his family from Carabanchel in south Madrid because an apartment cost 20 percent less to rent. In May, he bought a house with his wife for €240,000 ($272,808).

“We chose (Sesena) because we can afford it,” Delgado, 34, said.

The trade-off is rising before 5 a.m. (0300 GMT) to be among the first in the queue for the 6.30 a.m. bus to Madrid to arrive at his construction job by 8 a.m. or face an hour’s wait for the next bus.

Back to life

Other ghost towns are also coming back to life. Valdeluz, a development 75 km east of Madrid originally envisioned to house 30,000 people, was abandoned a quarter of the way through when the property bubble burst.

Mayor Enrique Quintana told Reuters the town’s 6,000-strong population is swelling with people from Madrid and could expand by 50 percent in the next four years.

A development on the edge of the village of Bernuy de Porreros, 100km north of Madrid, which as recently as six years ago was mostly abandoned, is now bustling with activity as handymen put the finishing touches on homes.

Lucia, a 37-year-old state employee, bought her house in April. Her daily commute to Madrid involves a 15-minute drive to the train station in Segovia and 28 minutes on the high-speed train, which costs her 48 euros for 30 trips thanks to a frequent traveler discount.

The development began to revive when Spain’s so-called bad bank Sareb, which was set up to take bad loans from the financial crisis, in 2021 began selling the homes for as little as €97,000. Four years later, one property was resold for double that, said resident Nuria Alvarez.

Until recently a relatively compact city, Madrid is on the way to becoming a metropolis like Paris or London, with commuter zones stretching beyond its administrative boundaries, said Jose Maria Garcia, the regional government’s deputy housing minister.

The metropolitan area’s population of 7 million will grow by a million in the next 15 years, the government estimates. Madrid has a deficit of 80,000-100,000 homes that’s growing by 15,000 homes a year and plans to build 110,000 homes by 2028, Garcia said.

Sesena, meanwhile, is once again dreaming big.

Its mayor, de Hita, said the town is securing permits for a new project dubbed Parquijote, with a proposed investment of €2.3 billion to build a logistics park that will create local jobs, along with 2,200 homes.

It’s no quixotic fantasy, de Hita said.

“This time we have learned from what happened,” he said. “It is fundamental that we look for growth by learning from the past.”

Around 20,000 people are being urgently evacuated from their homes in Cologne, Germany, after three unexploded Second World War bombs were discovered.

After the city undergoes its largest postwar evacuation, experts will be brought in to defuse the US-manufactured bombs which were found on Monday in a shipyard in the district of Deutz.

Two of the bombs are 1,000kg and the third is 500kg. All are equipped with impact fuzes, meaning they are intended to detonate upon contact with a hard surface.

Around 20,000 evacuated in Cologne as major bomb defusal operation underway (DPA)

The evacuated area includes the entire old city, 58 hotels, three Rhine bridges, a railway station, a hospital, museums, two care homes and the town hall, city authorities said. The bombs are set to be defused after the evacuation, which began at 8am local time (7am UK time) on Wednesday.

“We are sealing off and evacuating the danger zone within a radius of 1,000 meters from 8am on Wednesday,” authorities said. “Around 20,500 residents and a large number of working people are affected by the evacuation.”

Roads on either side of the river Rhine will be closed as authorities seal off the large evacuation zone. The Unesco World Heritage Cologne Cathedral sits just outside the area.

Tents and help centres, staffed by aid organisations, have now been set up for those who have ben evacuated from their homes and workplace, as Dusseldorf district’s Explosive Ordnance Disposal Service defuses the ordnance.

The city warned that there will be many blue-light ambulances throughout the city as patients who are sick or mobility-impaired are relocated from the Eduardus Hospital.

Cologne city authorities have released a map of the evacuation zone (Cologne City)

“Everyone involved hopes that the defusing can be completed by Wednesday,” Cologne city authorities added. “This will only be possible if all those affected leave their homes or workplaces early and stay outside the evacuation area from the outset.”

Bomb defusals are common in Cologne, which was heavily targeted by the Allied countries in their bombing campaigns across Nazi Germany. Around 20,000 people were killed during the aerial bombardments of Cologne, which suffered 262 separate air raids throughout the Second World War.

It has been reported that around 35 million tons of bombs were dropped on the city during the war.