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Lithuania’s engineer battalion clears 1,100 munitions of two World Wars

The most intensive period for the battalion is spring, when active tilling and soughing works begin

VILNIUS, August 6 (Itar-Tass) - Lithuania’s Juozas Vitkus Engineer Battalion has liquidated around 1,100 munitions of two World Wars from the beginning of the year. The Baltic state’s Defense Ministry said engineers had responded to over 500 emergency calls and carried out mine-clearing operations.

“The most intensive period for the battalion is spring, when active tilling and soughing works begin. May turned out to be the hottest month, when engineers received over 180 alarm calls about dangerous findings,” the commander of the battalion’s engineers unit, Arnoldas Anelauskas, told a national radio station on Tuesday.

In January-July field engineers successfully neutralized a huge arsenal of munitions - artillery shells, aircraft bombs, anti-personnel and anti-tank landmines, bombshells and around 11,000 cartridges of different caliber.

The battalion carried out one of its most difficult operations on August 3. Mine clearing divers with the help of special equipment took to the surface from the bottom of the River Neman in Kaunas Germany’s 250 kg aircraft bomb. Field engineers defused it at a testing range.

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