A German demining team on Sunday defused an unexploded World War II bomb that forced the evacuation of 18,500 people into the city of Ludwigshafen.
The 500-kilogram (1,100-pound) aerial bomb, allegedly dropped by US forces, was discovered during construction earlier in the week.
"Good news: the bomb has been defused! Citizens can go home," said the city of Ludwigshafen on its official Twitter feed.
He also posted a photo of the freshly dug corroded bomb attached to a pallet before being removed from the area.
Authorities in the western city ordered all those living within 1,000 meters (0.6 mile) of the bomb site to leave their homes at 08:00 (06:00 GMT) as a precaution prior to the defusing operation.
It took a little over an hour for the bomb team to carry out this delicate task, and the all-clear was given shortly after 14:00.
More than 70 years after the end of the Second World War, Germany remains littered with unexploded ordnance, a legacy of the intense Allied bombing campaign against Nazi Germany.
At the largest post-war evacuation to date, some 60,000 Frankfurt residents were evacuated last year, so a British bomb of 1.8 tons unexploded, dubbed "blockbuster", could to be defused.
In April, thousands of people had to clear an area around Berlin's central station after another British bomb was discovered on a construction site.
Unexploded ordnance also complicated firefighter work this summer, as wildfires were triggered by hot, dry weather that triggered buried munitions, causing small explosions several times.
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