More than 50,000 residents from the southern German city of Augsburg are being evacuated from their homes so that an operation to defuse a World War Two bomb can get under way on Sunday.<\/p>\n
It is the country’s biggest evacuation for an unexploded bomb since the end of the war.<\/p>\n
The 1.8-tonne British explosive is thought to have come from a 1944 air raid, which destroyed the old town.<\/p>\n
It was uncovered during construction work.<\/p>\n
Police say they do not know how long the operation will take.<\/p>\n
The BBC’s Europe regional editor Mike Sanders said the city authorities are taking no chances, and are evacuating everyone with a 1.5km (0.9 mile) radius of the bomb.<\/p>\n
The authorities are confident that most people affected can stay with friends or family, but a number of schools and sports halls have been opened as shelters for those in need.<\/p>\n
Most Germans celebrating Christmas open their presents and have their main festive meal on 24 December, rather than Christmas Day.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
More than 50,000 residents from the southern German city of Augsburg are being evacuated from their homes so that an operation to defuse a World War Two bomb can get under way on Sunday. It is the country’s biggest evacuation for an unexploded bomb since the end of the war. The 1.8-tonne British explosive is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":279574,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[14521,14522,14523,13678],"class_list":["post-279573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","tag-emergency-evacuation","tag-germany-emergency","tag-world-war-bomb","tag-ww2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=279573"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279573\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=279573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=279573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=279573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}