About 750 residents have been evacuated from an area near the Polish port city of Swinoujscie as military divers begin an operation to defuse a 5.4 tonne British World War Two bomb at the bottom of a Baltic Sea shipping canal. The 6 meter-long (19 feet) "Tallboy" bomb is embedded at a depth of about 12 meters (40 feet), and only the device's nose is sticking out of the bottom of the canal. The operation is expected to take about five days, and the bomb will be defused and removed by a remotely controlled device.

The bomb was discovered during dredging (the removal of debris and sediments in the canal) last year, and is thought to have been originally dropped by an Avro Lancaster of the British Royal Air Force in a 1945 raid that sank the German heavy cruiser SMS Lützow. This is the largest bomb that Poland has ever attempted to defuse underwater. According to Polish military sources, the bomb must be defused and disposed rather than detonated, as an explosion could cause a powerful seismic wave that could damage property or injure locals. Local Polish media sources say that some people being evacuated refused to stay at temporary shelters in fear of the Covid-19 coronavirus. 

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