While workers at a school in the Solomon Islands were “digging a hole for sewage,” they discovered a buried stash of World War II munitions, police said.

More than 200 rusted projectiles – once belonging to U.S. troops – were dug up and removed after being found near the home of a school employee, the Royal Solomon Islands Police Force said.

At the height of World War II, Japan and the United States fought bitterly for control of the Solomon Islands, littering the South Pacific archipelago with unexploded ordnance that continues to claim lives today.

On Tuesday, Inspector Clifford Tunuki said the long-hidden weapons cache had been moved to a safe location and was now awaiting “safe destruction.”

The discovery was an “eye-opener,” he said.

“The removal occurred when the school discovered the stockpile of US projectiles in front of a staff house while digging a hole for sewage disposal,” police said in a statement.

The Solomon Star reported that schools in Honiara, the capital of the Solomon Islands, had suspended classes for several days.

Photos showed police removing the heavily corroded ammunition by hand after digging it out with a shovel.

The latest discovery is part of the devastating consequences of World War II for the Pacific region.

Thousands of bombs were dropped on Pacific islands, including the Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea and Palau. Many of them failed to explode. Ammunition depots were also set up on the islands.

Two foreign bomb disposal experts were killed in Honiara in 2020 while working to map old weapons caches across the country.

In 2021, more than 100 unexploded World War II bombs were discovered in the backyard of a house in Honiara. The unexploded bombs were found by a man who was digging a hole for a new septic tank on his property in a residential area.