BERLIN (Reuters) - German police evacuated a kindergarten in the western city of Darmstadt on Wednesday after teachers found an unexploded World War Two bomb lying on a shelf among some toys.

“A child had found the stick-type incendiary bomb during a walk in the woods and brought it along to the kindergarten,” police spokeswoman Andrea Loeb said.

Teachers called the police after they found the “strange object” on the shelf and the kindergarten was quickly evacuated, Loeb said, adding that a bomb disposal team safely removed the bomb from the kindergarten.

The danger of unexploded World War Two aerial bombs lurking in the soil still haunts Germany more than seven decades after the war ended in 1945.

More than 2,000 tonnes of live bombs and munitions are found each year in Germany, even under buildings. They are defused or detonated in controlled blasts but not before causing disruption, evacuations or sometimes even death.