Italy: 54,000 Brindisi residents evacuated as WWII bomb defused

Around 54,000 people were evacuated in the southern Italian city of Brindisi on Sunday as experts worked to defuse a World War II bomb.

This operation is known as the biggest peacetime evacuation in Italy to date.

Italian authorities said the British bomb is believed to have been dropped on the city in 1941. It is around 1 meter long and contains 40 kilograms of dynamite.

The bomb was found by chance last month by a construction worker at a movie theatre that was under renovation.

More than 60 per cent of the city’s residents were forced to leave a red zone in a radius of just over 1.5 kilometres from the site where the bomb was found. 

The city's airport, train station, two hospitals and a prison were shut down as part of the operation.

At 13:00 local time, authorities confirmed experts successfully defused the explosive, and the bomb would be taken to a remote location for a controlled explosion on December 16.