Military experts defused and detonated a controlled explosion on Sunday of the 450kg bomb, which was discovered on July 25 near the northern village of Borgo Virgilio, near the city of Mantova. “The bomb was found by fishermen on the bank of the Po river due to the decrease in water level caused by the drought,” said Colonel Marco Nassi. It was not easy to clear the bomb. A World War II bomb discovered in the dried Pa River is detonated by the Italian Army’s 10th Engineer Regiment in Medole, Italy. (Italian Army – 10th Engineer Regiment/Handout via Reuters) About 3,000 people living nearby were evacuated for the neutralization operation, the military said. The airspace in the area was closed and navigation along this section of the waterway as well as traffic on a railway line and state road nearby was stopped. “At first, some of the residents said they wouldn’t move, but in the last few days, we think we’ve convinced everyone,” Borgo Virgilio mayor Francesco Aporti said, adding that if people had refused to go, businesses would have done stopped Bomb disposal engineers removed the fuse from the US-made device, which the military said contained 240 kilograms of explosives. The bomb squad, escorted by police, then took the device to a quarry in the municipality of Medole, about 45 kilometers away, where it was destroyed. Italy declared a state of emergency last month for the areas around the Po, the country’s largest river. It accounts for about a third of Italy’s agricultural output and is experiencing its worst drought in 70 years. A view shows sections of the dried Po River near Borgo Virgilio. (Flavio Lo Scalzo/Reuters)
