Estonian police snipers destroy WWII-era shells

Photo: Ida-Eesti pommigrupp

For the first time ever, Estonia used police snipers on Tuesday to render harmless pieces of ammunition from the period of World War II.

The national rescue authority was informed on July 18 that people searching for mushrooms in a forest near Permiskula village in the territory of the Illuka rural municipality had found two 105-millimeter shells of German origin.

A decision was made to bring in snipers from the K-komando commandos unit of the police, who destroyed the pieces of ammunition with gunshots.

«To our knowledge, this is the first time that sniper weapons and snipers were used to render unstable explosive ordnance harmless. To do this, we brought in the K-komando special unit of the Police and Border Guard Board,» Rauno Raidloo, head of the Rescue Board's EOD team for eastern Estonia, said.

«The environment where we destroyed the explosive devices is very difficult and it was almost impossible to use an EOD robot there,» Raidloo told Postimees, explaining that there was a danger that a remote controlled vehicle gets damaged in the process. «A sniper works from a safe distance, meaning the smallest danger of material damage.»