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Shock as war bomb destroyed

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By Tom Hanley
Dumfries and West

AN EXPLOSION shook the Annan Road in Dumfries this week — as troops destroyed a World War II device found in a garden.

Police attended, and a bomb disposal unit were called to the property at Shawfield Loaning at about 7.45 pm on Wednesday.

A woman living at a neighbouring property said: “I was in my kitchen at aroundaquarter past seven when two police cars and a police van came up Shawfield Loaning, and stopped at one of the neighbours.

“Me and my husband weren’t too concerned until around quarter to ten when a big, grey, boxlike van came hurtling up the street at a hell of a speed beforeIheard an almighty bang like I’ve never heard before.”

Alarmed, and believing she may have heardagunshot, the woman added: “My partner wanted to go outside to takealook, but I stopped him. “I said, ‘What are you doing? Don’t go out there. You don’t know what it is. It could be a man with a shotgun or anything’.

“Then, a couple of my neighbours came out and the police were reassuring people. “That’s when they told us thataman had been weeding his garden and found a bomb from the war – and we thought nothing ever happened around here.”

A spokesperson from The British Army confirmed thatacontrolled explosion had taken place in a nearby field at 10.50 pm.

He said: “It was a German incendiary device, so it was old. It was destroyed in situ.

“This was done by the Edinburgh Troop Explosive Ordnance Disposal who travelled down from Edinburgh.

“It’s called ‘destroyed through demolition’, disabling it.” There were no injuries or casualties as a result of the controlled detonation

Annan and Eskdale, Dumfries and West

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