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Thousands of passengers in France and the United Kingdom have been stranded after a World War II bomb was discovered on tracks leading to a major train station in Paris.

Eurostar, the operator of high-speed trains that travel between key European cities, announced on Friday the cancellation of all its services to and from its hub in the French capital.

A spokesperson for France’s national rail operator, SNCF, said the unexploded World War II bomb was discovered during work near the Gare du Nord station.

Services will only be permitted to resume once “mine clearance operations” by the French police are completed, the spokesperson added.

Gare du Nord is a major European transit hub, serving international destinations north of France, such as London, the European Union capital, Brussels, the Netherlands, and the main Paris airport and many regional destinations.

The bomb was discovered about 4am (03: 00 GMT) by workers doing earth-moving work near the tracks in the Seine-Saint-Denis region. Minesweepers were sent to the site and their operation is still going on.

Transport Minister Philippe Tabarot expected the disruption to continue for at least the rest of the day.

Bombs left over from World War I and World War II are regularly discovered around France, but it is rare to find them in such a densely populated location.

‘ Options limited ‘

The repercussions quickly rippled beyond France’s borders. In Brussels, trains to Paris were cancelled until at least Friday afternoon.

“There’s no solution. We’re going to call the hotel and stay one more day and change our train ticket”, Michel Garrot, a retired Parisian visiting the Belgian capital, told The Associated Press news agency.

At London’s St Pancras station, travellers who had been looking forward to Paris’s charms found their plans dashed.

“We’re looking up flights, but our options are limited”, passenger Lauren Romeo-Smith told AP.

In Paris, traveller Kasman Ibrahimi told the Reuters news agency he had planned to catch a train to Cologne, Germany, but would now look for a different route.

Another three people were wounded in the violence, the police said in a statement as the death toll increased from 19 to 22 on Friday.

Police said the gunfight erupted on Thursday after opposing factions of a gang called Los Tiguerones, one of the most powerful in this formerly peaceful country, were caught in a dispute.

Guayaquil’s El Universo newspaper described the killing as a “massacre”, adding that the gangs were fighting over the territories they control.

According to the newspaper, several homes in the Socio Vivienda district of the city were targeted by at least 20 armed gang members, resulting in the multiple deaths.

Images and videos posted on X showed several heavily armed men running around the district of Socio Vivienda during the attack.

Emergency medical workers were also seen rushing injured people for treatment, as dozens of government security forces were deployed to the area.

The latest deaths bring to more than 400 the number of people killed in the area in recent months, El Universo reported.

Ecuador is home to an estimated 20 criminal gangs involved in drug trafficking, kidnapping and extortion, wreaking havoc in a country of 18 million squeezed between the world’s biggest cocaine producers, Peru and Colombia.

In recent years, Ecuador has plunged into violence amid the rapid spread of transnational cartels that use its ports, like Guayaquil, to ship cocaine to the United States and Europe.

Homicides, for example, have risen from six per 100, 000 inhabitants in 2018 to a record 47 in 2023.

Experts say the gangs are constantly mutating and growing stronger with profits from crime.

Guayaquil is the capital of Guayas, one of seven provinces where a state of emergency has been in force for the past two months as the government battles the gangsters.

Last month, the right-wing President Daniel Noboa, who is seeking re-election, said he would ask unspecified allied countries to send special forces to help him wage this fight.

The violence is not letting up as Ecuador gears for a run-off election on April 13 in which Noboa will face leftist Luisa Gonzalez.

Noboa had taken an “iron-fisted” approach to crack down on violent crime, including declaring a state of emergency and deploying the army to the streets.

Human rights groups claim the aggressive use of armed forces has led to abuse, including the murder of four boys&nbsp, whose charred bodies were recently found near an army base.