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One person was killed and five were injured on Monday when a World War II bomb exploded during extension work on a German motorway. The explosion took place on the A3 motorway near Aschaffenburg, about 40 kilometres south-east of Frankfurt.

Police said a 46-year-old worker was killed when the machine he was using to widen the road hit the 250-kilogramme bomb buried under the concrete surface.

Four other workers and a passing female motorist were treated for shock after the explosion left an 8 x 2.5-metre-deep crater in the motorway, one of Germany's busiest.

Wreckage from the blast damaged several passing cars and trucks and hit two houses 500 metres away, police said.

Initial reports said the explosion was caused by a bomb left over from the war, but police later said it could have been a grenade used in demolition work before experts confirmed the original theory.

The A3, which runs from the Dutch border through the Ruhr Valley, Cologne, Frankfurt, Nuremburg and onto Austria, was closed in both directions for several hours, causing traffic chaos.

Unexploded munitions from World War II are regularly discovered in Germany during road and construction work.

A 250-kilogramme bomb dropped from British Royal Air Force bomber was defused near the A352 motorway near the northern city of Hanover on Monday.

On Saturday, a 70-kilogramme wartime bomb was destroyed in a controlled explosion near the A12 motorway, east of Berlin, after 1,000 people living in the vicinity were evacuated.

In one of Germany's biggest-ever bomb-disposal operations, 22,000 people left their homes in Hanover last week while experts removed the detonators from three World War II bombs.

� 2006 dpa German Press Agency

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