Emergency services made a shocking discovery after a man was found dead in his apartment in Calau, southeast of Berlin. An arsenal of military-grade weapons prompted the authorities to evacuate the area.
An ambulance team alerted police after accidentally finding a large amount of weapons and ammunition in a residential area of the eastern German town of Calau, authorities said on Monday.
The paramedics were called after a 46-year-old man was found dead in his apartment. According to preliminary information, the man likely died of natural causes and his body was discovered by his father.
After arriving to the scene on Sunday, the medics noticed the weapons in the man's apartment and notified the police, which subsequently found even more weapons and boxes of ammunition in the man's basement and garage.
The tenant shared the house with other people living in separate housing units.
Police had to set up a perimeter around the house after finding a large weapons cache in a residential areaImage: picture alliance/dpa/dpa-Zentralbild/B. Settnik
Neighbors evacuated
Police said they have found rifles, pistols, boxes of ammunition, hand grenades, and non-lethal bombs used for training purposes. Some of the ammunition stems from World War II, according to the police.
The authorities then set up a protective perimeter around the house and the garage and forced the neighbors to evacuate. Over 70 people were moved from their homes while the police secured the weapons. Specialist teams later detonated some of the ammunition in a controlled explosion.
Citizens were able to return home on Sunday evening.
How Germany handles guns
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Old bombs still buried
German authorities often conduct similar evacuation efforts to allow for defusing of World War II bombs, many of which lie buried below German cities to this day. Finding weapons' arsenals, however, is a much rarer occurrence due to the country's relatively strict gun laws.
Police said they were probing the incident to determine a possible violation of Germany's law on military-grade weapons.
Unexploded ordnance in Germany - a legacy of the Allied Forces
Over 50,000 people were evacuated from the northern city of Hanover in May 2017, so that bombs from World War II could be defused. Even 72 years after the war ended, unexploded bombs are still found across the country.
Image: picture-alliance/AP/U.S. Strategic Air Forces
What is unexploded ordnance?
Unexploded ordnance (UXO or sometimes also abbreviated to UO), unexploded bombs (UXBs), or explosive remnants of war (ERW) are explosive weapons such as bombs, shells, grenades, land mines, naval mines and cluster munitions that did not explode when they were deployed. Unexploded ordnance still poses the risk of detonation, even decades after they were used or discarded.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/S. Grundmann
Why does Germany have a bomb problem?
Between 1940 and 1945, US and British forces dropped 2.7 million tons of bombs on Europe. Half of those bombs targeted Germany. Experts estimate that close to a quarter of a million bombs did not explode due to technical faults. Thousands of these bombs are still hidden underground, sometimes a few meters down and sometimes just below the surface.
Image: picture-alliance/Everett Collection
How big is the issue?
The industrial Ruhr area and the Lower Rhine region were heavily bombed, as were the cities of Dresden, Hamburg and Hanover. So this is where most of the unexploded ordnance is found. Bombs are usually unearthed during construction work or are discovered during the examination of historical aerial images. Experts say it could still take decades to clear all of the remaining unexploded ordnance.
Image: Reuters/H. Hanschke
What happens when an unexploded bomb is found?
When confronted with the discovery of an UXO, UO or a UXB, bomb disposal experts have to decide whether to defuse it or to carry out a controlled explosion. Many have lost their lives on the job. German authorities are under pressure to remove unexploded ordnance from populated areas. Experts argue that the bombs are becoming more dangerous as time goes by due to material fatigue.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/S. Puchner
How many bomb disposal experts have died?
Eleven bomb technicians have been killed in Germany since 2000, including three who died in a single explosion while trying to defuse a 1,000-pound bomb on the site of a popular flea market in Göttingen in 2010.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/U. Zucchi
Which was the biggest evacuation?
A 1.8-ton bomb dropped by Britain’s Royal Air Force (RAF) was found in the city center of Augsburg on December 20, 2016. The find prompted a large-scale bomb disposal operation and consequently the evacuation of over 54,000 people on December 25. To date, this remains the biggest evacuation for the removal of World War II unexploded ordnance in Germany.
Image: Markus Siefer
What’s the latest?
Authorities conducted another big bomb disposal operation in May 2017, with 50,000 residents in the northwestern city of Hanover forced to evacuate their homes. Thirteen unexploded ordnances from the 1940s were removed. Hanover was a frequent target of Allied bombing in the latter years of the war. On October 9, 1943, some 261,000 bombs were dropped on the city.
