Authorities in Bialystok, Poland, evacuated about 10,000 people from their homes Sunday morning after a 500-kilogramme (1,100-pound) World War II-era bomb was found during construction work.

Residents on about 60 streets in the northeastern city near the Belarus border, along with those living on 45 streets in two suburbs, had to leave after military experts determined there was a risk the bomb could explode while being extracted from the site by a crane.

Evacuations were also carried out along the route soldiers were to take to bring the bomb to a military base where it would be destroyed.

Such bombs are often found at construction sites in Poland, in particular in Warsaw, where about 90 percent of the city centre was destroyed by German bombing before the war's end.