Rome: A huge cache of unexploded bombs from the First World War emerged this summer from rapidly retreating glaciers in the Dolomites, the Italian army has said.
The devices, which included Italian artillery shells and French mortar bombs, were removed and defused by the army’s Julia Alpine brigade, according to a statement, according to a report by ‘The Guardian’.
The weapons originated from the white war, a battle between the Austro-Hungarian army and Italian troops across treacherous and bitterly cold terrain between 1915 and 1918.
More than a century later, hikers reported several sightings of bombs during the summer, mostly in the area of Canal San Bovo in the Primiero Valley in eastern Trentino.
The soldiers then conducted an extensive sweep there and across other high-altitude and glacier locations in the Trentino Alto Adige region of the Dolomites.
They recovered and neutralised 250 explosives, including “18 Italian 75mm artillery shells and 37 Thevetot mortar shells – a French-made device that was also supplied to the Italian royal army during the First World War”, the Julia Alpine brigade.
It is not the first time that relics of the white war have emerged from melting glaciers, whose retreat has accelerated over more than a decade.
“It is very much a consequence of global heating,” said Stefano Morosini, a professor at the University of Bergamo and the coordinator of heritage projects at Stelvio National Park, where some of the explosives were also found.
“In recent years, at the end of each summer, these dangerous artefacts emerge and each year there is a higher number.
They have been conserved by the ice for more than 100 years. Some had already exploded but many hadn’t, so now when they re-emerge, they are very, very dangerous.”
The advice to hikers and mountaineers is to “never touch any type of explosive device you might find, regardless of where it is located” and to promptly report any discovery to police.