Paris (AP) – Train Services Paris It will gradually resume later on Friday after a discarded work on the absent WWII bombs, including the halt of high-speed train links with London and Brussels, sparked transportation chaos in the French capital.
Transport Minister Philip Tavaro said nearly 500 trains have been cancelled, and the disruption at Gare du Nord, France’s busiest station, affected around 600,000 people. It was not immediately clear how the bombs were made safe or disposed of.
“I was delighted and relieved that this was all over,” he said, adding that after being closed for several hours, the main highways were soon reopened. Train services were scheduled to resume from local time (1700 GMT).
Railway services have been suspended at Gare Du Nord, postponing workdays and weekend holiday plans for commuters.
EuroStar, a sophisticated high speed train operator Channel Tunnels joining the European Continent and Englandexpects normal traffic between Paris and Brussels on Saturday. The company said it will operate two extra trains. One departs from London to Paris in the morning, the other heads from Paris to London in the afternoon.
The cascade of transport disasters first spread across the road network after crashing into the morning rush hour train service, with Paris police closing the A1 highway feeding north of the city and closing the capital’s ever-busy section of the ring road.
EuroStar has announced the cancellation of all services linking Gare Du Nord’s Paris Hub to the UK and Belgian capitals. Commuter, regional and high-speed train scores between towns and cities in Paris and northern France have also been cancelled.
Travel plans were confused
Gabriel Cotton, a tourist from Missouri in the US, traveled by train from Amsterdam, the Netherlands to Paris, but was not farther than Brussels.
Passengers were on standby for Eurostar trains to London, and all trains heading towards northern France were stopped on Friday, March 7, 2025, at Gare du Nord station in Paris, after an unexploded bomb was discovered dating back to World War II. (AP Photo/Samuel Petrekin)
“I heard the girl next to me. Her parents called her and said that a World War II bomb was found at the station,” she said. “They told us we had to get off in Brussels.”
Michel Garrotto, retired from Paris, also found himself stuck with his wife in the Belgian capital.
“There’s no solution. I’ll call the hotel and stay another day. I’ll change my train ticket,” he said.
Passengers fought over alternatives at St. Pancras International Station, the Eurostar hub in London. Fridays are always busy with thousands of weekend travelers. Passengers bound in Paris were encouraged to take trains or fly to the reels in northern France.
Charlotte Riddell, who became a bride, had already wanted to go to Paris and join a friend in the French capital.
“The hens are not having chickens!” she said. “We’re very upset, but that’s out of our control.”
Another traveler, Lee Bailey, said that Eurostar offered him a free rebooking or refund and an apology, but there was no compensation.
On Friday, March 7, 2025, passengers at St. Pancras International Station in London stopped after the Eurostar train to the capital was stopped after a misfire World War II bomb was discovered near the tracks in Paris. (James Manning/PA via AP)
“I want to go to a Michelin star restaurant in Paris on their dime, but it doesn’t seem to happen,” he told Sky News.
Eurostar said “I apologized wholeheartedly for the confusion and understand the inconvenience this could cause.”
The bomb was dug overnight
Workers working overnight on the Bridge Representative Project discovered a halfton bomb before dawn on Friday. It is a terrestrial movement machine about 2 meters (6 feet) deep, and was discovered between train tracks in the Sain Dennis region of northern Paris, north of Paris, between the railway tracks north of Gale du Nord Station, the SNCF said.
The bomb disposal service arrived within an hour, setting up a 200-meter security perimeter and later extended it to 500-meter. Tavarot said 300 police officers worked to secure the area.
“This wasn’t a small operation,” Tabarot said.
When morning rush hour travelers began arriving at Gare du Nord to catch trains later, they were greeted by bright red signs warning of confusion, a line of passengers seeking exchange of information and tickets, and a barrier blocking access to the Eurostar terminal.
Gare du Nord habitually hosts 700,000 travelers per day, making it the busiest railway hub in both France and Europe, says SNCF. In addition to towns and cities in northern France and the outskirts of Paris, the station also serves major airports in Paris and international destinations, including London, Brussels and cities in the Netherlands.
The fatal legacy of World War I and II
The bombs left from battles fought in France and the skies in both world wars are regularly excavated after a century, but it is rare to cause such widespread confusion in Paris, where people are packed.
In World War II, allied bombings that flattened towns and cities in the Normandy region northwest of Paris did not result in destruction on the same scale in the French capital. Still, factories, trains and other targets in and around Paris were repeatedly bombed, killing more than 3,600 people and wounding thousands more. According to city archives.
The Ministry of Home Affairs has said this ever since. (The end of the Second World War in 1945the disposal team removed 700,000 air-drop bombs and made nearly 50 million mines, shells and other explosive devices safe.
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Associated Press writer Sylvie Corbet at Brussels and Jill Lawless of London contributed to this report.
