Walberswick evacuated as wartime bomb detonated on beach

Police officers and bomb disposal experts evacuated Walberswick beach

A WW2 mortar has been detonated on Walberswick beach in a controlled explosion.

Bomb disposal experts were called to the village, near Southwold, after the explosive device was discovered at around 12:50 BST.

The bomb was unearthed by a local builder working on a home in The Street.

Suffolk Constabulary ordered a 100m exclusion zone to be put in place and closed several roads in the area.

Astrid King said the bomb was discovered at her home when her builder started digging a trench for an electric cable in the garden.

"It looked like an aerosol can with some feathery things on the bottom but we later found out it was 1kg of live explosives," she said.

The bomb was found in the garden of Walberswick resident Astrid King

Ivy Haddon-Silver was on the beach with "hundreds of other people" at the time the device was found.

She said: "Everyone was being ushered away from the beach.

"I've been coming here for years but I've never seen it so busy. It was pretty crazy."