A team of army divers and sappers removed five WWII-era artillery shells from the bottom of a flooded quarry in Złotoryja (Lower Silesian Voivodeship). The soldiers have been scouring the quarry, after an amateur diver found the ammunition.

Poland's General Command of the Armed Forces said on Wednesday that on July 13 an amateur diver had discovered five unexploded artillery shells at the bottom of a flooded quarry he had been exploring.

The bottom of the quarry is located some 40 metres below the surface of the water. The ammunition found and secured so far includes 120mm, 57mm, and 12.7mm calibre artillery shells.

"In order to extract dangerous items, we use a rafting boat. Divers attach the shells to the pontoon and help to bring them up the surface, and then we haul them to a vehicle. Next, we take the shells to a military ground where we detonate them," the 8th Coastal Defence Flotilla spokesperson Łukasz Koziarski told tvn24.pl.

He added that the area around the quarry had been secured for the duration of the search. "This kind of devices are always dangerous. In this case even more so because they had been sitting under water for years and were corroded and unstable. Should anyone finds any kind of unexploded ordnance, they should never attempt to move it on their own," Koziarski cautioned.