Traffic at the Paris Gare du Nord train station has been halted after a second world war bomb was found on tracks leading to France’s busiest terminal, officials said.
The unexploded bomb was found in the middle of the tracks overnight during maintenance work carried out in the suburb of Saint Denis, the national SNCF rail company said.
The bomb dated from the second world war, the RER B suburban train line wrote in a post on X.
The device was found at about 4am on Friday by workers doing earth-moving work near the tracks at a location in the Seine-Saint-Denis département, 1.5 miles (2.5km) from the Gare du Nord. Minesweepers were quickly sent to the site.
Bombs left over from the first and second world war are regularly discovered around France but it is very rare to find them in such a population-dense location.
All traffic to the Gare du Nord, which hosts Eurostar trains from London as well as high-speed and local services, was closed as Paris police worked to disable the device.
The Gare du Nord lies in the north of Paris and is the country’s busiest rail terminal, serving an estimated 700,000 people each day, according to the SNCF.
The French transport minister, Philippe Tabarot, told French radio before heading to the scene that teams were “massively mobilised” to deal with the device. He said: “There’s nothing to be afraid of, but there are procedures we have to respect.”
Tabarot said the teams were working as fast as possible within a large security perimeter, adding that some disruption was likely throughout the day but that he hoped some trains could resume in the afternoon.
Eurostar advised passengers to change their tickets to travel another day.
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Some French regional trains to northern destinations were leaving instead from Gare de Lyon.
The train operator TER estimated its services in the northern Hauts-de-France region would not resume before mid-afternoon after the go-ahead from French authorities.
Passengers who had intended to travel by train to Charles de Gaulle airport were advised to take a bus from Opéra.
