Bevy of Bombs Beneath Zagreb

Wow, this just keeps getting better...

If you remember (and for many still-homeless residents, it's difficult to forget), last September a residential street, and then factory, collapsed in downtown Zagreb during construction of the Penkala business centre (planned since 2005). That minor mishap resulted in the evacuation of several blocks and the destruction of many homes that had the misfortune of falling into the earth.

Well, get this: Yesterday police evacuated about one thousand people from their homes when an unexploded US-made, 250-kilogram bomb containing 126 kilograms of explosive was discovered by workers digging foundations for the same accursed project. Unable to safely remove the enormous bomb, explosives experts had to deactivate the war souvenir on site, which, incredibly, they had success in doing. The bomb will now be transported to a military complex where it will be destroyed.

Even better, this was the fourth bomb found in the past few months in the area; several of which, spokesmen were eager to point out, lay beneath a children's playground. While the previous three bombs were removed without incident, this was the first that required the evacuation of the neighbourhood. (Luckily, this process was made easier by the fact that half the neighbourhood had already been evacuated or destroyed by the aforementioned incident with the city-swallowing hole in the earth.)

The origin of the bombs was quickly recognised as World War II when Allied forces dropped the explosive buggers all over a nearby Nazi airfield and the surrounding area in 1944. Croatia was a Nazi puppet state at the time. Surprisingly, the spate of recently discovered underground bombs has not yet been put forward as an explanation for that street collapse we keep mentioning.