Rail traffic at the Gare du Nord in Paris, a station that receives Eurostar trains from London as well as high-speed and local services, has been halted after a second world war bomb was found on nearby tracks.
The unexploded bomb weighing 500kg was found in the middle of a set of tracks during overnight maintenance work in the suburb of St-Denis, about 1.5 miles (2.5km) from the Gare du Nord.
Minesweepers were quickly sent to the site.
Bombs from the first and second world war are regularly discovered around 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 minesweepers were called in, with the perimeter extended to 1km on Friday morning.
Local authorities in St-Denis said residents were being 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 de-mining operations, the police prefecture said.
Matthieu Chabanel, 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 II, 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 immediately been notified.
It was not immediately clear 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, told French radio before heading to the scene that teams were “massively mobilised” to deal with the device. He said: “There’s nothing to be afraid of, but there are procedures we have to respect.”
Tabarot said the teams were working as fast as possible within a large security perimeter, adding that disruption was likely throughout the day but he hoped some trains could resume in the afternoon.
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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 holidaymakers 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 estimated its services in the northern Hauts-de-France region would not resume before mid-afternoon after 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.
