December 27, 1940 - a ship flying Soviet colors approached Nauru. But it was a trap. Germany’s hidden raider, the Komet, opened fire, devastating the island’s vital phosphate operations. It was the ...

During the early years of World War II, the German navy launched daring raiding missions in the Pacific Ocean - far from the ...

Nauru was strip mined for phosphate from the early 1900s. For nearly a century, the landscape was gouged by miners, leaving the center of the island a near barren landscape of jagged rocks.

Unusually pure phosphate deposits — a key ingredient in fertilizer — once made Nauru one of the wealthiest places, per capita, on the planet. But these supplies have long dried up, and ...

Once one of the world’s richest nations per capita, Nauru was built on phosphate mining, an industry that has left 80 per cent of the island uninhabitable. Most residents live on the coast.

The island republic sits on a small plateau of phosphate rock in the sparsely populated South Pacific. Researchers today estimate 80 percent of Nauru has been rendered uninhabitable by mining ...

Nauru was once one of the wealthiest places on the planet but lucrative supplies of phosphate deposits have long dried up - Copyright AFP TORSTEN BLACKWOOD Nauru was ...