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Economy

Wildfires expose and detonate buried WWI and WWII bombs across Europe

Wildfires raging across France, Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands have triggered explosions of rusted bombs and mines left over from the First and Second World Wars.

Source: Associated Press · August 22, 2026 at 11:45 PM · AI-assisted report

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Wildfires expose and detonate buried WWI and WWII bombs across Europe
Photo: Johnragai-Moment Catcher via flickr (BY)

KUALA LUMPUR, 23 AUGUST 2026 —

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Wildfires raging across France, Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands have triggered explosions of rusted bombs and mines left over from the First and Second World Wars.

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In northeastern Belgium’s High Fens forest, Governor Hervé Jamar reported “a few sporadic detonations” as flames advanced over peat-bog terrain still littered with 80-year-old explosives. A massive blaze near Bordeaux uncovered a suspected Second World War ammunition cache, while authorities in the Netherlands diverted disposal teams from firefighting to check a wooded area near the 1944 Limburg battle site.

“Climate change is now doing the work of unburying and reactivating what was previously stable,” said Sarah Njeri, a peace and conflict scholar at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies. Steady temperatures and reliable rainfall once kept buried weapons dormant, but today heat from wildfires and the loss of scrub cover expose them to air and can trigger explosions.

The extreme fire season was amplified by January rains that spurred vegetation growth, which became kindling when summer drought, low humidity and strong winds arrived, according to a study last month by the World Weather Attribution group.

Unexploded ordnance is especially hazardous around wildfires because heat can set off old explosives, said Jonas Tepe, spokesperson for Germany’s North Rhine-Westphalia state.

Belgium’s Explosive Ordnance Disposal and Destruction Service now receives about one request per week to clear munitions in fire-hit zones, though the ministry does not list the High Fens as a “hot spot” compared with western regions such as Ypres, where farmers call annual ploughing “the iron harvest” because it turns up so many war remnants.

Across Belgium, the disposal service responds to more than 3,000 calls annually and destroys 200 to 250 tonnes of leftover munitions from both world wars. Drought has also exposed hidden ordnance: in Slovakia the Danube River shrank enough to reveal two naval mines that were later detonated, while a Second World War bomb near Budapest forced the closure of Margaret Bridge. Low water in the Rhine in Germany exposed another wartime explosive.

“The legacy of war keeps creeping up,” said Christina Greene, a University of Arizona researcher who co-authored a study on the wildfire-ordnance link. “It’s reliving the legacies of war and conflict in a way we haven’t had to deal with in a while in certain places.”

Reporting based on Associated Press. Figures and claims are subject to revision as the story develops. DomainFork publishes editorial context, not investment advice — see our editorial standards.