Overview

• Over 20,000 people from the city center and Deutz district were relocated in the largest evacuation Cologne has seen since 1945.
• Authorities completed two door-to-door checks, overcoming a holdout who resisted evacuation before granting clearance for disposal.
• A 1,000-meter exclusion zone shut down hospitals, schools and major transport links, including three Rhine bridges and parts of train service.
• Bomb disposal experts from the Kampfmittelbeseitigungsdienst began a controlled defusal operation this evening, allotting roughly 30 minutes per device.
• North Rhine-Westphalia clears 1,500–2,000 WWII bombs annually, and officials say the scale of this operation highlights their routine preparedness for complex defusals.