Explosive weapons

Turkish security forces have destroyed 40 mines and 227 improvised explosives in its anti-terror operation in northern Syria, the country's National Defense Ministry said on Oct. 24.         

Nearly 15,000 people were evacuated Monday night in the German city of Hanover due to a World War II aerial bomb disposal operation, BTA reported.

The 500-pound projectile was discovered on a construction site.

According to estimates, at the end of World War II, over 2 million bombs of different caliber were thrown over Hitler's Germany. 10-20% of them never exploded.

When two deminers were killed on August 25  nearby the town of Livno in south-west Bosnia while they were on duty in one of the minefields that still blight the country, it again highlighted the dangers faced by those who are working to clear the remaining unexploded ordnance left over from the 1992-95 war.

Тwo men have died in Poland in a bomb explosion, likely from World War II, DPA reported.

The two men, aged 29 and 35, brought the bomb to a garage where it exploded. The incident took place in the village of Chernovo near the town of Ostroleka. Police and army bomb-disposal experts approached the scene and discovered even more dangerous military equipment.

Turkey's president said on March 6 that Ankara has finalized an agreement on purchasing Russia's S-400 missile defense system.

Unidentified vandals used homemade gas canister bombs to target a church in Thessaloniki in the early hours of Monday, causing minor damage and no injuries.

The explosion caused by the homemade bombs damaged the external walls of the church, located in the Saranta Ekklisies (40 Churches) neighborhood of the northern city, police said.

The Hellenic Army's Land Mine Clearance Squad (TENX) recovered a total of 106 missiles, 42 hand grenades and 13 land mines dating to various conflicts from different parts of the country as part of a clearance operation last month, defense officials said on Wednesday.

The munitions were all destroyed in controlled procedures by TENX experts.

Bulgaria has returned 190,500 anti-personnel mines to Greece due to an incident at a plant where they should have been destroyed, the Bulgarian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Wednesday, reports Sputnik.

A fisherman located a naval mine dating to World War II off the coast of Nea Moudania in Halkidiki, northern Greece, reports said over the weekend.

The mine was found on Thursday at a depth of around 5 meters some 350 meters from shore, according to local reports.

The US had planned to end its use of cluster bombs, a type of explosive that ejects smaller submunitions to kill personnel and obliterate vehicles, by 2019, but on Thursday, the Pentagon approved a new policy reversing this promise.