BERLIN, Feb. 1 (Xinhua) -- The controlled explosion of a 250-kilogram World War II bomb in the German town of Lingen has caused property damage, smashing windows, according to German police.

The explosion on Thursday was heard beyond the city boundaries, but there were no injuries reported, the police said on Twitter.

German bomb disposal specialists had decided that a controlled explosion was necessary because it had "not been possible to disarm the bomb in Lingen without assuming greater risk". The removal of the bomb to a safer location was also ruled out.

After the unexploded bomb was discovered during preliminary building inspections near the old harbor of Lingen on Thursday, several parts of the city had to be evacuated. 8,800 residents were affected by the evacuation, including three residential homes for the elderly as well as Lingen's town hall.

In 2017, bomb disposal specialists were alerted 725 times in the state of Lower Saxony where the Lingen bomb was discovered. They exploded 271 bombs weighing 50 kilograms or more that were too dangerous to move or disarm.

During the war, approximately half of the air raids over Germany were targeting the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, according to the interior ministry.

The large cities on the River Rhine and in the Ruhr area, but also many other major cities in the country, were particularly affected. According to the North Rhine-Westphalian interior ministry, unexploded bombs are "the legacy of the war" that are still "found today, particularly in urban areas, at traffic junctions and on the surface of industrial plants."