The discovery of an unexploded World War II bomb will force a mass evacuation around Berlin's central railway station Friday, covering several government ministries and a hospital and the city's Tegel airport, police said.
Buildings and streets in a radius of 800 meters (875 yards) around the site north of the busy train station will be cleared from 0700 GMT until the 500-kilogram (1,100-pound) explosive is safely defused, they said on Twitter Wednesday.
The evacuation zone covers the central railway station, the economy and transport ministries, an army hospital and the embassies of Indonesia and Uzbekistan, a police spokesman told AFP.
Berlin's Tegel airport has also warned passengers to expect disruption on Friday morning when the bomb is defused.
Planes coming in to land at Tegel, which is about seven kilometers (4.4 miles) away from the central station, may therefore need to be re-routed to avoid flying above the defusing site.
"Air traffic will be significantly limited tomorrow morning before and during the defusal," the airport operator told passengers via Twitter. Bus travel to and from the airport is also set to be disrupted.
A spokeswoman for Berlin Airports said more details would be made available during the day. Berlin police said a decision on whether to close the air space will be done by the bomb deactivation team.
Tegel airport was also briefly closed last August after a Russian-made bomb was discovered, forcing flights that evening to divert to the city's other airport, Schoenefeld.
Tegel is Berlin's busiest airport, serving over 21 million passengers a year. Major airlines flying to the airport include easyJet, Lufthansa, Eurowings, British Airways and Air France-KLM.
The bomb, which was discovered during construction work on Heidestrasse in the district of Mitte, was "safe for now", police said, reassuring nearby residents that "there is no immediate danger."
Allied planes blasted Nazi Germany during the Second World War, and vast urban and industrial areas remain littered with unexploded bombs and other ordnance often found during construction projects.
Last Friday in the state of Bavaria, an ordnance disposal team defused a 500 kilogram bomb which had forced the evacuation of 12,000 people in the city of Neu-Ulm -- the third unexploded bomb to be disarmed in recent weeks in the city of 50,000 people.
