BERLIN—Thousands of people were evacuated from central Cologne in western Germany on Wednesday following the discovery of three wartime bombs, in what the city authority called the largest such operation since the end of World War Two.
An evacuation zone with a radius of 1,000 metres (1,100 yards) was cleared from 8 a.m. (0600 GMT), impacting around 20,500 residents along with many workers and hotel guests in the city’s old town and Deutz district.