The bomb was discovered at about 4 a.m. during overnight maintenance roughly 2.5 kilometres north of Gare du Nord. Transport Minister Philippe Tabarot said it contained 200 kilograms of explosives. Authorities established a security perimeter of 500 metres, evacuated nearby buildings and placed six schools and a nursing home under lockdown while specialist teams worked at the site.
All trains serving Gare du Nord were stopped during the operation. The suspension affected suburban services, French high-speed and national routes, and Eurostar connections between Paris and London. Eurostar cancelled its Paris trains for the full day and advised customers to move their journeys to another date. Services linking London with Brussels and Amsterdam, which do not pass through Paris, continued operating.
The shutdown left travellers waiting at Gare du Nord and London St Pancras or seeking alternative routes. Eurostar said passengers whose trains were cancelled were eligible for refunds. With later services already heavily booked, the interruption created difficulties for customers hoping simply to transfer to another departure.
Police chief Laurent Nuñez announced that the shell had been made safe on Friday afternoon and said the security cordons would be lifted. Tabarot said the disposal operation had gone well and that rail traffic would begin returning gradually from 5 p.m. GMT, although he warned that the station would remain heavily disrupted throughout the day. Eurostar services between London and Paris were expected to resume on Saturday.
The effects extended beyond the railway. Authorities closed sections of the A1 motorway and parts of a heavily used ring road around the French capital while the device was being handled. Gare du Nord is France’s busiest rail terminal, and national rail operator SNCF estimates that about 700,000 people pass through it each day, magnifying the effect of a complete closure.
Unexploded weapons from the two world wars are still found regularly in France, where transport infrastructure was among the targets of wartime bombing. Discovering such a large device in a densely populated area beside one of Europe’s most important rail hubs was unusual, however. The operation ended without a reported detonation or injury, shifting the immediate challenge from public safety to restoring a complex transport network after a day-long stoppage.
