Eurostar trains to and from London and other trains heading northward from Paris were brought to a halt on Friday following the discovery of an unexploded bomb dating back to World War II near tracks serving the French capital’s busy Gare du Nord station.
France’s national train operator SNCF said in a statement that traffic was stopped at the request of police.
Eurostar, which runs passenger trains through the Channel Tunnel between Britain and the continent, cancelled all services between London and Paris on Friday morning and advised passengers to pick another day to travel.
French Transport Minister Philippe Tabarot said traffic would be ‘’strongly disrupted” throughout the day with only limited service resuming in the afternoon, and urged travellers to postpone their trips.
The bomb was discovered around 4am by workers doing earth-moving work near the tracks in the Seine-Saint-Denis region. Minesweepers were sent to the site and their operation is still going on. Stranded travellers converged on the station as it opened on Friday.
The Gare du Nord is a major European transit hub, serving international destinations north of France such as the EU capital, Brussels, and the Netherlands, as well as the main Paris airport and many regional destinations.
Bombs left over from World War I or World War II are regularly discovered around France but it is very rare to find them in such a people-packed location.
Tabarot, speaking on broadcaster Sud Radio, said local residents and people near the train stations should have “no fear” of a risk of explosion, stressing the procedures in place for defusing and removing such bombs.
Friday is one of the busiest days of the week at Eurostar’s London hub, St. Pancras Station, as thousands of people leave and arrive for weekend breaks.
Trains between London and Eurostar’s other major destination, Brussels, were unaffected.
Associated Press
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