The Greek army chief of staff, Nikos Phanios, told Agence France-Presse that the bomb's firing mechanism “was still in a very good shape, and this was what had us worried.”

That worry was enough for the army to try to evacuate more than 70,000 people living in a 1.1-mile radius of the gas station. It came up against resistance from mostly working-class locals, who feared their homes would be susceptible to looting if they left. Local reports indicated that many of the buses meant for evacuation left almost empty.

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In 1943, when the bomb was reportedly dropped, the Germans and their Axis allies Italy and Bulgaria had seized all of Greece. A nearby train station was cited by Greek media as the likely target of the British bombing more than seven decades ago. The unearthing of World War II-era bombs is not unusual, but this one's size prompted the biggest peacetime evacuation in Greek history.

The process to unearth and defuse the bomb was delayed in part by the need to first remove a camera installed by a Greek media organization that was deemed too close to the excavation site.

Some of those who evacuated were elderly and had lived through the Nazi occupation of Greece. Greek authorities put them and others up for the day in schools and sports venues around the city. About 400 refugees, mostly from Syria, who are being housed at a former toilet paper factory, were relocated for the day to the city's archaeological museum.

It took Greek military pyrotechnic experts about an hour and a half to defuse the bomb, during which time the city's train operations and church services were suspended. The bomb was then taken to a military shooting range to be destroyed.