According to reports, police spokesman Norbert Halter said that at around 14:00 local time, in an industrial zone on the outskirts of Euskirchen, a construction worker accidentally detonated a WWII-era bomb while operating an excavator. The worker was killed in the explosion, and 8 others were injured, two of them seriously.

　　Halter said the blast affected an area of at least 1 kilometer, shattering the roof of a nearby supermarket, but causing no casualties there. The sound of the explosion could also be heard in Bonn, about 20 kilometers from Euskirchen.

　　North Rhine-Westphalia has repeatedly seen WWII-era bombs, and other German cities also frequently experience large-scale evacuations due to the disposal of such bombs, or casualties caused by accidental detonations. In recent years, Germany has disposed of about 5,500 WWII-era bombs each year, mostly in densely populated major cities. On June 1, 2010, a bomb was found at a construction site in the famous university city of Göttingen, and three bomb disposal experts were killed on the spot when the bomb suddenly exploded.