TORGAU, Germany () -- Engineers on Wednesday demolished the last span of an Elbe river bridge that local people had sought to preserve as a monument to the wartime linkup of Soviet and U.S. troops.


A new highway bridge was opened last year, making the century-old span superfluous. Its pillars in mid-river also were a hazard to barge traffic on the Elbe, and authorities decided, against protests, to demolish the bridge.


Local boosters had hoped to preserve the old bridge and use it as part of an annual festival that brings American and Russian veterans to reunions marking their linkup on April 25, 1945, near Torgau, some 100 kilometers south of Berlin. The linkup was a milestone in the Allied defeat of Nazi Germany, which capitulated two weeks later as the Soviet Red Army took Berlin