Bomb disposal technicians have removed a dozen World War II mortar shells from the bottom of Lake Bled after a foreign diver found one of them and alerted the police.

The Kranj Police Department said the foreigner spotted a mortar shell at the bottom of the lake while diving on the morning on 7 August.

Having been informed of his find, police cordoned off the site and an unexploded ordnance (UXO) protection unit was called in.

The technicians detected a total of 12 Italian-made Brixia mortar shells at the depth of about seven metres. They removed the ordnance from the lake and destroyed them.

This is not the first time UXO was found in a Slovenian lake. In 2010 more than 100 mortar shells from World War I were discovered in Lake Bohinj, not far from Bled.

Slovenia's major tourist sites, both Bled and Bohinj are buzzing with visitors at this time of year.

The police have urged the public to exert caution in case of an UXO find. Potential finders are advised not to approach the devices, but to mark the location of the find and withdraw to a safe distance the way they came from and report the find by dialling emergency number 113 or 112.

The police will secure the site and the civil protection bomb disposal technicians will, taking appropriate precautions, destroy the UXO on the site or take it to an appropriate place to dispose of it.

The police have warned that there have been quite a few grave and even deadly accidents due to inappropriate handling of unexploded ordnance in the past.

A man was killed in the Novo Mesto area in 2018 when he brought home a mortar shell and wanted to deactivate it. Similar cases occurred in the area covered by the Nova Gorca Police Department in January 2021 and in the Postojna area in March the same year.