Relics From 2 Wars Still Kill Europeans : Arms: Officials estimate that millions of pounds of bombs, artillery shells, land mines, grenades, torpedoes and other explosives are lying around in Europe or just off its coasts.

The bombs of World War II are still killing in Europe. They turn up--and sometimes blow up--at construction sites, in fishing nets or on beaches 50 years after the guns fell silent.

Hundreds of tons of explosives are recovered every year in France alone. Thirteen old bombs exploded in France in 1993, killing 12 people and wounding 11, the Interior Ministry said.

“I’ve lost two of my colleagues,” said Yvon Bouvet, who heads a government team in the Champagn-Ardennes region that defuses explosives from both World War I and II. “One was pulverized. I saw the fire; I saw him ripped apart. They only found pieces of him.”

Officials estimate millions of pounds of bombs, artillery shells, land mines, grenades, torpedoes and other explosives are lying around in Europe or just off its coasts.

In Germany, an explosion thought to have been a World War II bomb killed three people in Berlin in September. On Oct. 17, about 10,000 people were evacuated from their homes in the southern Rhine River city of Ludwigshafen while experts defused a 3,600-pound bomb dropped by a British plane during the war.

A Dutch team detonated a British bomb Oct. 8 after dredgers found it in a canal near Amsterdam. The same afternoon, a few miles away, Dutch experts defused an artillery shell found by a child playing.