1 ton of WWII explosives found under hotel

MOSCOW, July 11 (UPI) -- Construction workers in central Moscow have found more than 1 ton of explosives at the site of a demolished hotel close to the Kremlin.

Sappers, police and emergency services were called to the site of the Moskva Hotel after dozens of boxes filled with explosives were found Sunday afternoon in the hotel's foundations, The Moscow Times reported Monday.

The explosives are believed to date from World War II, when Soviet forces sometimes mined strategic sites so they could be blown up if the Germans entered the city.

City police officials said there was no danger of the explosives going off, as there were no detonators present and the explosives had decayed, the Interfax news agency reported.

The explosives were probably placed under the hotel in 1941, two years after the building's completion, when the Germans advanced into central Russia and reached the outskirts of Moscow, Interfax reported.

The city government last year ordered the Moskva Hotel to be demolished. Originally the city intended to blow up the building, but the plan -- perhaps thankfully after Sunday's discovery -- was shelved in favor of taking the building down bit by bit.