A man sparked an evacuation at a French hospital after doctors discovered an eight-inch-long live World War I artillery shell in his rectum.
The unnamed 24-year-old rushed to the Rangueil Accident and Emergency unit in Toulouse, in the south west of the country, late on Saturday night.
‘He was in a state of extreme discomfort, having inserted a large object up his rectum,’ said an investigating source.
‘Emergency surgery was carried out, and the object was found to be an artillery shell dating back to the First World War.
‘Worse still, it had not exploded, and so bomb disposal experts had to be called to diffuse the shell, with the fire brigade standing by.’
Staff and patients were evacuated from Rangueil Hospital, and a security perimeter was set up around the accident and emergency unit, before the pointed 1918 shell, which was almost 8 inches long and just over an inch in circumference, was declared safe.
The patient, a French national, was set to be interviewed by police this week, as prosecutors contemplated legal action against him for handling ‘category A munitions,’ according to an officer.
There was no initial explanation as to why the shell ended up in the man’s body, but local media speculated that it might have had something to do with his social life.
The unnamed 24-year-old rushed to the Rangueil Accident and Emergency unit in Toulouse, in the south west of the country, late on Saturday night
The 37mm brass-and-copper shell was 20cm long and used by the Imperial German Army towards the end of the First World War (stock image)
La Dépêche newspaper writes that medical staff in Toulouse are ‘accustomed to treating victims injured during sexual games.’
The 37mm brass-and-copper shell was 20cm long and used by the Imperial German Army towards the end of the First World War.
Such shells were date-stamped, and hundreds of thousands were used against British and French forces in major set-piece battles across the Western Front between 1914 and 1918.
They are regularly discovered in the so-called ‘Iron Harvest’ – the annual collection of often unexploded ordnance from the two world wars found on farmland, building sites, and other disrupted land.
But this is not the first time France has seen a case of this nature.
In 2022, doctors were left shell-shocked after an 88-year-old Frenchman arrived at a hospital with a World War I bomb stuck in his bottom.
The unnamed senior citizen arrived at the Hospital Sainte Musse in Toulon, southern France, in the hope of having the eight-inch-long artillery shell removed from his anus.
His arrival sparked a bomb scare as hospital officials feared the antique explosive would detonate.
However, bomb disposal experts determined that there was little risk of the shell exploding inside the man.
It is understood that the man had inserted it in his bottom for sexual pleasure.
