The Ethnographic Museum in Warsaw was evacuated on Tuesday morning after workmen discovered an unexploded mortar shell dating from the Second World War.

Police have now secured the building, and Polish army sappers have been called in to remove the material.

“About 150 people were evacuated from the building,” revealed Sergeant Tomasz Oleszczuk, press spokesman for Warsaw's municipal police, in an interview with Polish Radio.

The museum is currently in the throes of a major renovation programme, and workmen discovered the material lodged between the first and second floors.

Besides heavy shelling in September 1939, the Polish capital became the theatre of one of the most hard-fought battles of the Second World War.

The 1944 Warsaw Rising by Polish resistance fighters against the Nazi German occupiers lasted some two months and left much of the capital in ruins.

Earlier this month, police were called in after a shell weighing half a tonne was discovered while adaptations were being made to the city's water system in connection with the construction of Warsaw's second metro line. (nh)



