Bombs Away

Bombs and bomblets left intact on Lebanese soil have become one of the latest instruments to keep Israel in the "whipping-boy" mode which the Left wishes to portray it.

But, it seems, this problem is not a unique one.

60 Years Later, Buried Bombs Still Frighten Germans, and Kill Some

FRANKFURT, Oct. 23 — More than six decades after the end of World War II, Germans still routinely come across unexploded bombs beneath farmers’ fields or city streets. Lately, there has been a skein of such dangerous discoveries, one with deadly consequences.

On Monday morning, a highway worker was killed when his cutting machine struck a World War II bomb beneath a busy autobahn southeast of Frankfurt. The explosion ripped apart the vehicle and damaged several passing cars, wounding four other workers and a motorist.

Also on Monday, a weapons-removal squad defused a 500-pound bomb found next to a highway near Hanover, in the north. The police said it was a British aerial bomb, one of tens of thousands dropped on German roads, factories and cities during Allied bombing raids.

On Saturday, 1,000 people were evacuated from a town east of Berlin after a bomb was discovered. And last week, 22,000 people were evacuated from a district in Hanover after three bombs were discovered near a house. It was the second largest evacuation for a disposal operation since the end of the war.

While the four incidents were not related, they reminded people that even though Germans have spent decades digging out rusty munitions, their landscape remains something of a minefield.

“We’ll have enough work to keep us busy for the next 100 to 120 years,” said Sebastian Semmler, the owner of a small company in Bavaria that specializes in defusing and clearing munitions.

Allied warplanes dropped about two million tons of explosives on Germany, ranging from small firebombs to giant high-explosive bombs. There are also buried mortars, land mines and hand grenades, which often turn up during road construction or other major excavations.

Well, Israel is in 'good' company.

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UPDATE:

The German Defense Ministry said Wednesday it is investigating an incident in which two Israeli fighter jets fired shots and dropped flares near a German warship patrolling the Lebanese coast as part of a peacekeeping force.

The planes -- two F-16s -- fired two shots and released the flares, which can be used as a defense measure against heat-seeking missiles, said a ministry spokesman. He did not identify the vessel or say when the incident occurred.

The Israeli military denied the reports, saying the air force did not attack any ship or fire in the vicinity.