LONDON — Thousands of people were evacuated from the center of the east German city of Dresden on Wednesday, as authorities there prepared to detonate a World War II bomb discovered near one of the bridges spanning the Elbe River.

The 550-pound British-made bomb was discovered during clearance work at the Carola Bridge, the Polizei Sachsen — the law enforcement department covering the Saxony region in eastern Germany — said in a statement issued on Tuesday.

“It is equipped with a detonator and must be defused on site,” the statement said. “An evacuation area with a radius of approximately 1,000 meters around the bomb site is planned.”

The evacuation area was planned to be cleared of all people by 9 a.m. local time — 3 a.m. ET — on Wednesday, police said.

“The emergency services are now starting to control the restricted area,” the police wrote in a post to X early on Wednesday. “As soon as there are no more people in the area, the defusing operations will begin.”

Air-dropped World War II-era munitions are regularly discovered in major cities across Germany, a legacy of the bombing campaigns waged against the country by allied forces during the conflict.

In June, some 20,000 people were evacuated from the west German city of Cologne after the discovery of three unexploded World War II bombs there. The evacuation in Cologne was the largest recorded since the end of the conflict.

ABC News’ Joe Simonetti contributed to this report.