(7 Mar 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
++UPDATES TRANSLATION IN SHOT 5++
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Paris – 7 March 2025
1. Wide of police vehicle and waiting media
2. Close of police vehicle
3. SOUNDBITE (French) Christophe Pezron, Paris prefecture lab director:
“What happened was that at around 4 o’clock this morning, we were called by a team from the SNCF. They just discovered a bomb, an object that seemed a bit strange to them on their (SNCF French railway authority) site. A team was sent out immediately, and we identified it as a 500-kilogram English bomb, an extremely dangerous object. From there, we analysed the shape to find out exactly what type of munition it was.”
4. Wide of police vehicle and waiting media
5. SOUNDBITE (French) Christophe Pezron, Paris prefecture lab director:
“We identified it and established that we could safely try to defuse it. So that’s why we set up a safety perimeter which enabled us to move the bomb and position it in a hole. The bomb disposal teams then unscrewed the device, just as you can see in the movies. The rocket detonator was destroyed. Destroyed. The bomb just is ‘en route to Laon (a city in France ).”
6. Wide of police vehicle and waiting media
7. SOUNDBITE (French) Christophe Pezron, Paris prefecture lab director:
“It’s always risky. It’s always dangerous to handle something that fell 4-thousand meters from a plane, that contains almost 300 kilos of explosives, and that didn’t work. We don’t know why it didn’t work. So, yes, it’s dangerous, but it’s really the de-miners’ expertise that makes it possible to tackle and handle these objects.”
8. Wide of police vehicle and waiting media
9. SOUNDBITE (French) Christophe Pezron, Paris prefecture lab director:
“It could have (exploded), it could if had been struck in the wrong place.”
10. Wide of police vehicle and waiting media
11. SOUNDBITE (French) Christophe Pezron, Paris prefecture lab director:
“It’s part the very large-calibre bombs that were dropped by the Allies: 125, 250 and 500-kilo bombs. This was a 500-kilo bomb. Remember that a 500-kilo bomb is able to do damage at a distance of over 1,000 meters.”
12. Wide of police vehicle and waiting media
13. SOUNDBITE (French) Christophe Pezron, Paris prefecture lab director:
“Nobody knows how many are left, what we do know is that around 10% to 20% of the munitions dropped didn’t work. So obviously, just after the fighting, they recovered a certain number and defused them. And then, as here, we find them regularly, this is the fourth we’ve found in this area since 2019.”
11. Wide of police vehicle and waiting media
STORYLINE:
The disposal of what Paris police called an “excessively dangerous” unexploded World War II bomb caused hours of transportation chaos Friday on rail and road networks in the French capital, including the suspension of high-speed train links with London and Brussels.
Having moved the bomb into a hole, disposal experts managed to unscrew and then destroy its fuse, “like you see in the movies,” said Christophe Pezron, who heads the Paris police laboratory that includes bomb disposal services.
He said that the half-ton British-made bomb could have caused major damage had it exploded after workers inadvertently dug it up with an earthmover.
But the police operation that made the bomb safe before it was then taken away triggered major disruption for hundreds of thousands of rail travelers and motorists.
The bomb was dug up near train tracks north of Paris, forcing a shutdown of the rail network serving Gare du Nord, France’s busiest station.
Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AP_Archive
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/APArchives
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/APNews/
You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/youtube/f813cfd2919d419790f544c71af1db72
Author: AP Archive
Go to Source
News post in March 12, 2025, 9:04 pm.
Visit Our Sponsor’s:
News Post In – News
