Live 90-year-old grenade found in Israeli museum exhibit

Artefact will be returned to Haganah Museum in Tel Aviv once it has been defused

The Haganah Museum houses weapons and other artefacts documenting the paramilitary organisation's history (Wikimedia Commons)

A live grenade dating back to the 1920s has been removed from a museum in Tel Aviv by police after it was discovered in a cupboard.

A bomb disposal team was called to the privately-owned Haganah Museum in the city centre, and the authorities blocked off the area while the weapon was carefully removed on Thursday.

The item in question is thought to been manufactured by a private arms company in the 1920s for use by the Jewish Underground, which operated in British-mandated Palestine.

When the grenade has been defused it will be displayed in an exhibit on the history of the Jewish Underground in their struggle to establish the Jewish state, the Times of Israel reports.

The Haganah was a Jewish paramilitary organisation in the first half of the twentieth century which eventually grew into the modern-day Israel Defence Forces (IDF).

The museum, which was the home of one of the founders, served as the group’s headquarters. Today it houses a collection of weapons, documents and photographs from the organisation’s archives.