Photo: Royal Thai Police
When what seemed a 70-year-old bomb from World War II was dug up by a construction crew, it wasn’t taken for disarming and study. Instead, someone saw a lot of valuable American steel and took it to sell for scrap.
Apparently the bomb was not a dud, as seven people died yesterday when a worker at a Bang Khen district recycling yard cut into the 500-pound bomb with a welding torch.
Nearly 100 homes were damaged and 12 people injured by the blast on Soi Lat Plakalo 72, and now police are charging the yard operator with negligence, Thai PBS reported. Nothing was said of who made the decision to sell the enormous, antique explosive.
On Saturday a crew building the BTS Red Line found the bomb in Bang Sue in the same area a swarm of American B-29 bombers wildly dropped their payloads 70 years ago, almost all of which missed their targets. While all signs point to that being the source of the bomb, the evidence will remain circumstantial as a forensic examination now seems unlikely.
Related:
70 years after B-29s attacked BKK rail yard, BTS crew digs up vintage bomb
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