Prague - Workers found 71 bags Friday filled with an estimated 63,000 undelivered letters squirrelled away at a Czech railway station in what was seen as the greatest lapse in the history of the Czech postal service, officials said. "I believe that nothing of similar scope has ever happened to the Czech Post," spokesman Ivo Mravinac said.
Workers discovered the mail as they began demolishing a long- abandoned tunnel connecting a railway station in the south-eastern town of Breclav to a nearby post office, station's deputy head Zdenek Kristian said.
The unsealed bags were tucked away in an elevator shaft, or in a fashion that appeared to indicate criminal intent rather than negligence, he said.
Both the private and business letters had mostly arrived between 2001 and 2006 from abroad, including the United States, Canada, Russia, Australia or Germany, said Kristian, who inspected the unprecedented discovery.
The police were investigating the case. Mravinac said that both workers sorting the mail and their superiors were suspected of being responsible.
"We hope that things could be still rectified, that people who did not get their mail for six, seven years would finally receive it," Kristian said. "We have not recovered from this yet."
