Workers digging a hole to lay sewage pipes at a busy square in the Cretan city of Hania came across a live World War Two bomb weighing nearly 100 kilos, authorities said yesterday.

Workers said their digging equipment struck something hard, which they initially thought was a large rock. It was not clear how far below the surface the 91-kilo bomb was found.

Police cordoned off the area and called in an army expert.

“It is a bomb from the (German) occupation that had been dropped by a military plane,” said a bomb expert, as ambulance crews stood nearby.

The expert said he had removed parts of the bomb before it was taken away to be destroyed in a controlled explosion.