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Malmö station evacuated after bomb threat

Police in Malmö evacuated the Hyllie train station on Monday morning after a man said there was a bomb onboard a train at the station.

Malmö station evacuated after bomb threat

However a search of the train failed to turn up any explosives.

“Several people heard him say there were explosives on the train,” police spokeswoman Cindy Schönström-Larsson told the TT news agency.

The man was arrested shortly after police arrived on the scene around 10.30am, according to the paper.

While nothing suspicious was found on the man, sniffer dogs and a bomb detection team have been dispatched to examine the station to ascertain whether or not there are in fact any explosives on the train.

“They have found an object that they can’t identify,” Schönström-Larsson told the Expressen newspaper.

However, it was later revealed that the item belonged to one of the passengers who had been evacuated.

According to Schönström-Larsson, the suspect who has been arrested appears to be mentally unstable.

After being interrogated, he will be taken to a psychiatric care facility, she added.

The man was arrested on the train after witnesses alerted police to the bomb threat.

Local public transit operator Skånetrafiken is rerouting trains via Svågertorp as police investigate carry out their investigation of Hyllie station.

Additional buses have been put into service between Hyllie and Svågertorp to transport passengers stranded at Hyllie station due to the threat..

While Skånetrafiken spokeswoman Ulrika Mebius hopes rail service will return to normal around 2pm, she added that it remains “uncertain” exactly when service will resume.

TT/The Local/dl

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WWII bomb found in Frankfurt safely detonated after mass evacuation

A massive World War II bomb found in Germany's financial capital Frankfurt was safely detonated in the early hours of Thursday, the city's fire service said, allowing tens of thousands of evacuated residents to return to their homes.

WWII bomb found in Frankfurt safely detonated after mass evacuation
Experts stand on mountains of sand, which were put in place to soften the force of the explosion of the WWII bomb in Frankfurt's Nordend. Photo: picture alliance/dpa | Frank Rumpenhorst

The 500-kilogram unexploded bomb was unearthed during construction work on Wednesday in the densely populated Nordend area of the city, a location firefighters said made it a “particular challenge” to remove.

The Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper reported the ordnance had been discovered right next to a children’s playground at a depth of about two metres (6.5 feet).

READ ALSO: What you need to know about WWII bomb disposals in Germany

Its report said the controlled blast, which happened just after midnight, “sounded like thunder rumbling” and left a hole three metres deep and ten metres wide.

Firefighters said that they had covered the bomb with 40 truckloads of sand before detonating it, in order to minimise damage to the surrounding buildings.

Around 25,000 people had been asked to evacuate the area, including the occupants of a nearby community hospital’s neonatal ward.

Among residents who took shelter at a skating rink was 29-year-old Tobias, carrying his pet cat in a cage.

He said he had heard the news over a police loudspeaker and been ordered to leave his home immediately, causing a “bit of stress”.

Barbara, 77, told AFP the news was “a bit of a shock, we don’t expect that”.

However, building works in Germany regularly unearth unexploded World War II ordnance, 76 years after the conflict’s end.

Seven bombs were defused in 2020 on land near Berlin where Tesla plans to build its first factory in Europe for electric cars.  

READ ALSO: WWII bomb in Frankfurt triggers 30m high water fountain

Other bombs were also discovered last year in Frankfurt, Cologne, and Dortmund.

In Frankfurt, the discovery of a 1.4-tonne bomb in 2017 led to the removal of 65,000 people, the biggest such evacuation in Europe since 1945.

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