Small caliber projectile: what is known about the explosion on the embankment in St. Petersburg

On the October Embankment in St. Petersburg, the German projectile of World War II was detonated. This was reported in the Rosguards.

“By the nature of the traces of damage to the embankment elements, the Rosgvardi staff made a preliminary conclusion that the detonating small-caliber German-made projectile of World War II could have caused the explosion,” the ministry said.

The Rosguards specified that the bomb technicians examined the place of the incident in search of other explosive objects and found nothing.

The explosion on the October embankment in the Nevsky district of St. Petersburg thundered around 3:30 pm on Sunday, April 28. According to police, a 20-year-old man collected scrap metal in the vicinity and found an unexploded shell, which he detonated.

According to the district administration, which leads Tass, the man received various injuries and lost his arm.

The 78.ru edition specifies with reference to the victim in the incident that he found a bolt-like object before the incident. According to him, he tapped the found thing on the embankment, after which there was an explosion.

On the recording from the explosion site published by the Fifth Channel, a large dark spot is visible, which is being studied by the police. Next to them is parked the vehicle of the OMON engineering department.

The police is conducting an inspection on the fact of injury in the incident on the October Embankment in St. Petersburg.

Dozens of dangerous finds

The shells of the Great Patriotic War are still being found all over Russia. Only in April 2019, RT reported more than five finds of old ammunition.

In St. Petersburg on April 24, passers-by noticed a suspicious object, which the arriving experts identified as an 81-millimeter German mortar shell. The ammunition was taken and destroyed at the site.

On the same day, in the Kursk region, five shells from the times of the Great Patriotic War were found near two different villages - four artillery munitions and a mortar bomb. All finds were also taken to the landfill and destroyed.

On April 12, near Lipetsk, seven shells were found that were also defused. The day before, on April 11, they found a place in the Crimea for conducting illegal investigative activities on the territory of the battles of the Great Patriotic War. During the subsequent inspection of the site, 41 mortar mines, eight artillery shells and 16 hand grenades were found. Ammunition was moved to the landfill for disposal.

In Crimea, on April 9, a 500-kg high-explosive aerial bomb, discovered by divers 200 meters from the coast, was liquidated.

At the end of March, in the course of land works, a projectile of the war was found in Moscow. In the same month, large-scale disposal of ammunition was held in Kaliningrad by the efforts of a demining group from formations and military units of the army corps and a separate naval engineering regiment of the Baltic Fleet. It was reported about more than 25 detected and neutralized shells.

Perhaps the biggest one-time find of shells from World War II since the beginning of 2019 was the discovery of a cache with 134 pieces of ammunition in the Murmansk region in February.

We are talking about 105-millimeter mortar shells, which were used during the war by German troops. They were found not far from engineering structures on the border with Finland. The territory was cordoned off, later the bomb technicians arrived at the place of their profits and made a controlled detonation.

In addition, in December 2018, the incident became known, during which the policeman in Moscow was seriously injured. The police then reported that the official had found an object similar to ammunition that had detonated and caused damage to the man. According to media reports, his hands were torn off.

In Europe, bombs from the Second World War are also often found. In April, at the bottom of the river Main, in Frankfurt, Germany, an unexploded ordnance from World War II weighing 250 kg was found.

Prior to this, in February, a bomb was also found in Nuremberg during construction work in the Hefen area. Before its destruction, local authorities evacuated almost 8,000 residents. The projectile was neutralized, but in this process the infrastructure of the city was slightly damaged.

In the same month, under similar circumstances, 1.5 thousand people were evacuated due to a bomb found in Paris.