Photo Gallery A Deadly Stash
The sleepy village of Becherbach in western Germany. A local pensioner known by his neighbors as "Gunpowder Kurt" because they knew he was a weapons fanatic amassed up to 60 tons of explosives including nitroglycerin, 50 guns including rifles and submachine guns, 60,000 rounds of ammunition, and crates of handgrenades, mines and rocket-propelled grenades.
A barn rented by the pensioner, named only as Kurt F. It also housed a vintage military vehicle. One investigator described the find as "probably the largest hoard of weapons and explosives owned by a private individual in Germany."
The market square of Becherbach on Saturday. All 600 villagers had to be evacuated for 16 hours until 5 a.m. on Sunday while a bomb disposal squad removed the explosives from the barn and took them to a nearby field to dispose of them in a controlled blast.
Bomb disposal experts used remote-controlled robots to ferry the explosives from the barn to the explosion site some 1,400 meters (around 4,500 feet) away.
Warning signs were put up banning motorists from the village while the disposal was taking place. Police patrolled the village to prevent looting during the evacuation.
