An explosive device may have been removed from the water in one of the fish ponds of De Oase in Valkenswaard on Wednesday afternoon. Employees of the Defense Explosive Ordnance Disposal Service (EOD) were called to help by the police. The suspicious package was taken to a remote location in Leende to explode in a controlled manner.
The discovery was made around one o’clock in the afternoon by a man who was cleaning the fish pond. He first fished a number of license plates out of the water with a rake. He reported this to the police.
When officers came to look at the fish pond, the man had brought a suspicious package to the surface with his rake. After an investigation by a police explosives expert, the EOD was called in.
EOD employees packaged the suspicious package and removed it safely. That job took several hours. The package was defused with a controlled explosion around five o’clock. This happened in a remote location on the Strijperdijk in Leende.
A police spokesperson said that the license plates found are being checked.