Unexploded World War II Bomb Found at Gare du Nord in Paris Halts Trains

Traffic ground to a halt at one of France’s busiest train stations on Friday after an unexploded World War II bomb weighing more than 1,000 pounds was uncovered just north of Paris, the authorities said.

The bomb was discovered in the Saint-Denis suburb during overnight work on tracks that lead into the Gare du Nord, a major Parisian transit hub that serves northern France and Europe.

“Traffic has been totally interrupted since this morning to and from Gare du Nord” at the request of the Paris police, France’s national railway company S.N.C.F. said in a statement, adding that trains would start running again once the police completed demining operations.

The bomb was discovered around 3:30 a.m. approximately a mile and a half from the Gare du Nord, the company said. Workers were landscaping at a bridge renovation site when an earth-moving machine revealed the bomb, which had been buried about six and a half feet underground. It is about three feet long and includes more than 400 pounds of explosive material, the company said, adding in a travel notice that “extensive earthworks” were necessary to safely defuse it.

Mine-sweeping crews arrived about an hour later and established a large security perimeter, which included sections of nearby road and highway that police closed off.

Traffic on high-speed and commuter railways was stopped for hours. All Eurostar trains that connect Paris to London, Brussels and Amsterdam were canceled, stranding travelers at the Gare du Nord, which served over 226 million travelers in 2023.

It is not uncommon in Europe for construction workers to come across unexploded ordnance from the conflicts that tore the continent apart during the 20th century, and the French railway company said that the area in which the latest bomb was found was “well known for its World War II remains.”

Last month, more than 175 practice bombs that had been used for training in the Second World War were found under a children’s playground in northern England. In 2018, thousands of people were evacuated in Berlin after an 1,100-pound World War II-era bomb was uncovered.

“It doesn’t happen every day, but it happens,” said Fabien Villedieu, a leader of Sud-Rail, a union of national railway workers, who shared a picture of the bulky, cylindrical, rock-encrusted bomb on X.

Mr. Villedieu, who said he had received the picture through an internal information-sharing system for railway workers, noted that the unexploded device was found about 600 feet from a busy express road that circles Paris.

“It’s in the middle of an urban zone,” he said.

Philippe Tabarot, France’s transportation minister, told reporters in Paris that the authorities were taking all necessary precautions to safely remove the bomb and that train traffic would remain disrupted for most of the day.