Explosives experts in Germany have detonated the remains of a 550-pound World War II bomb in central Munich.

The dapd news agency cited a police spokesman as saying the bomb was successfully destroyed Tuesday evening. Still, burning debris caused fires in several nearby buildings that had been evacuated after the bomb was discovered Monday in the Schwabing district.

Efforts to defuse the bomb failed and experts decided to pack it with explosives and detonate it rather than risk an uncontrolled explosion.

Allied airplanes dropped millions of tons of ordnance on Germany during World War II in an effort to cripple the Nazi war machine. Tens of thousands of unexploded bombs are believed still to be lying in the ground in Germany.