Residents were evacuated from approximately 1,200 homes in a densely populated London neighborhood on Tuesday, as bomb disposal experts worked to defuse a 455kg bomb from World War II.
The local council said it had lodged 80 people in hotels overnight and was serving hot food and drinks at a sports center and a local library, as well as providing activities for children.
“There’s been a sense of the Blitz spirit,” said Louise Neilan, a council spokeswoman in Southwark, located on the south bank of the River Thames. “We’ve been trying to reassure people.”
Southwark was an industrial and commercial hub that was badly destroyed during the Blitz, a German aerial campaign on Britain in 1940 and 1941 that killed about 20,000 civilians in London alone, and was intended to cripple the nation into surrender.
Several police vans and ambulances could be seen in the area, and three schools were shut.
Residents at the centers being run by the Red Cross for evacuees said that they were using the opportunity to get to know each other.
“When I first heard about it, I thought it was a joke, but when I saw the police, I realized it was serious,” said Juliana Ayeni, 32, a care worker.
“Before, nobody talks to each other, but after what’s happened, people just realize life’s too short, let’s just mingle,” she said.
Paul Carriere, 76, a retired sports teacher, said: “When you look at the world where we live, there’s a lot worse than this.”
“We’re all chatting and laughing. That’s what we’re doing. That’s what life is all about,” he said.
The huge bomb was found by workers on a building site on Monday and an initial 100m security cordon set up in the area was later widened to 400m as an army bomb disposal team moved in.
The London Fire Brigade said seven unexploded bombs were discovered between 2009 and last year, but rapid large-scale evacuations like the one seen in Southwark on Monday and Tuesday are rare.
Southwark councilor Lucas Green on Monday said that the bomb was buried 2m to 3m underground and still had its tail fin intact.
The official advised residents to open their windows and keep their curtains drawn in case of a blast, to limit the potential danger from broken glass.
However, 41-year-old charity worker Melina Kakoulidis said she was “more excited than anything else.”
“I’m very interested in World War I and World War II. For me, it’s more a learning experience,” Kakoulidis added.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS