THIRTEEN live bombs had to be detonated after they were dredged up near to Ipswich Waterfront.The drama began at around 9am yesterday when the bomb squad were called to an aggregates yard in Wherstead Road.

THIRTEEN live bombs had to be detonated after they were dredged up near to Ipswich Waterfront.

The drama began at around 9am yesterday when the bomb squad were called to an aggregates yard in Wherstead Road.

Included in the haul dredged up from the bed of the River Orwell was the front end of a highly explosive 25lb aircraft bomb which is thought to have been dumped in the sea during the Second World War.

The Explosive Ordinance Disposal (EOD) team from Colchester army barracks arrived on the scene at 10.14am to find all the explosives were live and operational.

Also among the explosives, packed under three tonnes of sand, were ten 20mm high explosive cartridges and two bullets.

An army spokeswoman confirmed that an EOD team was deployed from Colchester army barracks yesterday morning.

“She said: “The team were called to an aggregates yard in Ipswich where 13 items were recovered.”

All the explosives were detonated on the site, making little noise and by 11.28am they had all been safely disposed of.

Earlier this year the Royal Navy had to be called in to dispose of a huge second world war bomb of the coast of Felixstowe.

It took several days for divers to find the 1,000lb German bomb after it was lost when the Navy towed it out to sea to detonate it but it was eventually blown up, shaking homes across the town.

At the time, diver Stuart Bacon, director of the Suffolk Underwater Studies Unit said he would not have been surprised if other bombs had been found as there was a wartime explosives dump off Harwich.

He said: “We have found them many times. There is a tremendous amount of ordnance on the seabed around our coast - it is impossible to say how much.”

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