A second world war bomb found on rail tracks north of Paris was successfully defused on Friday after a day of transport chaos in which the Gare du Nord, used by Eurostar trains from London as well as other high-speed and local services, was shut, roads were closed and dozens of residents were evacuated in the suburb of St-Denis.
The unexploded bomb weighing 500kg was found in the middle of a set of tracks during maintenance work in the early hours of Friday morning in the Parisian suburb, about 1.5 miles (2.5km) from the major station.
After a day of police bomb disposal work, cancelled trains, closed roads, the evacuation of dozens of people whose homes had windows facing the site, and a lockdown of six local schools, the device, which contained 200kg of explosives, was successively deactivated at about 5pm local time (1600 GMT).
Bombs from the first and second world wars are regularly discovered in France. The device was found 2 metres below the ground in a location known for potential second world war debris. The rail maintenance work had been carried out with special precautions. When the device was found, work stopped and experts were called in, with the perimeter extended to 1km on Friday morning.
Local authorities in St-Denis said people were evacuated from some buildings whose windows faced towards the site where the bomb was being deactivated. Six schools and a care home in the area were also locked down for an hour, although local authorities said there was “no risk” to them. Part of the Paris ring road and the A1 motorway was closed to traffic owing to the disposal operations, the police prefecture said.
Matthieu Chabanel, the head of the rail infrastructure management unit SNCF Réseau, said that finding a bomb of such size was “really quite exceptional”.
“We know that during world war two, the rail network was heavily bombed, especially here north of Paris where there were also many factories,” he told reporters. “So we are particularly vigilant when we carry out work in this area and we detect an abnormal situation, which is what happened last night.” He added that police teams had been notified immediately.
It was not clear at first when and by whom the bomb was dropped and if it dated to before or after the 1940 occupation of Paris by Nazi Germany.
All rail traffic to the Gare du Nord, France’s busiest railway terminal, was stopped as Paris police worked to disable the device.
The Gare du Nord is a major European transit hub, serving international destinations such as Belgium and the Netherlands, as well as the main Paris airport and many regional destinations. The station, in the north of the French capital, serves an estimated 700,000 people each day, according to the SNCF national rail company.
The French transport minister, Philippe Tabarot, said defusing operations were “finally over, they went well”. Earlier, he told French radio: “There’s nothing to be afraid of, but there are procedures we have to respect.” Tabarot said the teams worked as fast as possible within a large security perimeter.
Eurostar advised passengers to change their tickets to travel another day. There will be no Eurostar trains into or out of Paris on Friday, affecting travel to and from London St Pancras. Services from London to Brussels and from London to Amsterdam, which do not go via Paris, were running normally, Eurostar added.
The mood was downcast at St Pancras station on Friday morning as travellers waited for updates on their journeys. Julie King, who had planned to visit Paris to celebrate her daughter’s 18th birthday, said the disruption had left them “really upset”.
Some French regional trains to northern destinations were leaving instead from the Gare de Lyon.
The train operator TER said its services in the northern Hauts-de-France region would not resume before the go-ahead from French authorities.
Passengers planning to travel by train to Charles de Gaulle airport were advised to take a bus from Opéra.
