Koblenz firefighter spokesman Heiko Breitbarth said Sunday experts were able to defuse the 1.8 ton bomb and a 275-pound U.S. bomb that had been discovered last month in the Rhine river.
He says the evacuation order still remains in place because a smaller smoke grenade found nearby will be brought to a controlled explosion.
Some 45,000 residents living within a radius of about 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) from the bomb site had to leave their homes Sunday in what was one of Germany's biggest bomb-related evacuations since the war ended. About 2,500 police officers, firefighters and paramedics were on duty across the city to secure the operation.
