70,000 being evacuated in Greece as WWII bomb defused

[nitpicker]

http://www.france24.com/en/20170211-70000-being-evacuated-greece-wwii-bomb-defused

11 February 2017 - 12H00
70,000 being evacuated in Greece as WWII bomb defused

THESSALONIKI (GREECE) (AFP) -

Greek authorities on Saturday began evacuating some 70,000 people in the city of Thessaloniki ahead of an operation to defuse a bomb from World War II. The bomb, containing nearly 250 kilograms (550 pounds) of explosives, was unearthed in the northern city during road works last week and is due to be defused on Sunday.

More than 300 disabled people and bedbound patients were set to be the first evacuated on Saturday using 20 ambulances, authorities from Greece's second city said. The full evacuation of all residents within a 1.9-kilometre (1.1-mile) radius of the bomb site, affecting three working-class neighbourhoods around west of the city-centre, is due to be completed before 0800 GMT on Sunday. Evacuation is "obligatory", regional security chief Apostolos Tzitzikostas told reporters Friday.

The operation is unprecedented in Greece, "where a bomb of this size has never been found in an area this densely populated," Tzitzikostas added.

Regional authorities said the entire operation would take up to eight hours, but local military spokesman Colonel Nikos Phanios was more cautious. "We don't know what we're going to find," he told AFP. Defusing the bomb and then moving it to a military shooting range "could take us up to two days", he added.

It is not yet known which side in the war dropped the bomb or when it fell, Phanios said.
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