Italian army clears 250 First World War explosives from Dolomites glaciers
The Italian army has removed and defused 250 unexploded wartime munitions from the Dolomites mountains, after a cache of them emerged from rapidly retreating glaciers during the summer of 2026, The Guardian reported.
The devices date from the White War, the name Italians use for the fighting between the Austro-Hungarian army and Italian troops from 1915 to 1918. Among the items recovered were Italian artillery shells and French mortar bombs, a type of short-range explosive fired from a tube.
Hikers reported sightings of the bombs in summer 2026, mostly in the area of Canal San Bovo, a village in the Primiero Valley in eastern Trentino. The Julia Alpine brigade, a mountain unit of the Italian army, then carried out a sweep of Canal San Bovo and other high-altitude and glacier locations in the Trentino Alto Adige region. Its specialists recovered and neutralised the explosives, which included 18 Italian 75mm artillery shells and 37 Thevetot mortar shells. The Thevetot was a French-made device supplied to the Italian royal army during the First World War.
Bomb disposal of this kind is slow and hazardous work, and the sweep covered terrain that is difficult to reach. The Italian army described the operation as an end-of-season assessment of its summer clearance campaign in the mountains, and the campaign was closed out by the Alpine sappers, the army's mountain engineers, of the Julia Brigade. ANSA, which reported the total in October, gave the figure as more than 250.
The finds also include human remains. On the Presena glacier, documents revealing the identity of an Italian soldier were found with his body. His relatives buried him in 2017.
Some of the relics recovered from the mountains are to be displayed in a White War museum. According to the reporting, the museum in Bormio is scheduled to open in June 2027.
