According to the German police, it was “almost certainly” a bomb that caused a powerful blast and left a mysterious giant hole on a field in Limburg-Ahlbach in the German state of Hessen. The weapon was apparently at least four metres underground and weighed around 250 kilos, Frankfurter Neue Presse reports.
The police stated earlier on Monday that they suspect a World War II weapon could have detonated, although they were not ready to confirm this theory, as the German media noted. Officials have deployed drones to examine the crater.
Gestern wurde in einem Feld im Bereich von #Limburg-Ahlbach ein Krater (10 m Durchmesser, 4 m tief) gemeldet. Bisher keine definitiven Hinweise auf einen mutmaßlichen Blindgänger. Heute weitere Untersuchungen.
— Polizei Westhessen (@Polizei_WH) 24 июня 2019 г.
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On Sunday night people in Limburg reported that they heard an explosion and felt a quake. According to Frankfurter Neue Presse, the shock was so severe that the measuring equipment of the State Office for Nature Conservation, Environment and Geology in Hadamar registered it. The geology service reported that they had detected a 1.7-magnitude tremor at exactly 3:52 a.m. In the afternoon, a 10-metre-wide and 4-metre-deep crater was discovered in a local field. Nobody was reportedly hurt.
The explosive ordnance disposal team has been called to investigate and confirmed that the shape of the crater points at the possibility of it being left by a bomb, while the version that a machine exploded has been excluded. Experts earlier suggested it was a bomb with a so-called acid long-term detonator. Due to their construction there is a risk that they could explode over years, which “happens every now and then”, as was reported.
From the very beginning the European Space Agency excluded the theory that it could have been an asteroid. According to ESA Planetary Defence Office boss Ruediger Jehn, it would have been preceded by a visible fireball in the night sky, which many people could have observed within a radius of hundreds of kilometres. Additionally, the heat would have left molten material behind. He points out that the photo provided by the police has no signs of great heat or any melting process.
