Police shot a male migrant dead following a series of violent knife attacks on Friday evening. The 27-year-old suspect, identified as an Afghan national, initially attacked another Afghan, aged 23, in Wolmirstedt—a German town approximately 80 miles west of Berlin—using a “knife-like object,” resulting in the younger migrant’s death.
Subsequently, the Afghan targeted a group of soccer fans watching the opening game of the Euro 2024 tournament between Germany and Scotland. During the attack in the yard of a private residence, the migrant injured three German men, two of them seriously.
The Afghan also tried to attack officers responding to the incident, resulting in his fatal shooting. The Interior Ministry in Saxony-Anhalt, the German federal state encompassing Wolmirstedt, has announced an increased police presence across the region.
Authorities have yet to reveal the motive behind the attacks. At the end of May, another Afghan in the German city of Mannheim stabbed multiple people at an anti-Islamization rally, killing a police officer. Days later, a man caught vandalizing posters for the anti-mass migration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party stabbed an AfD candidate who confronted him.
The AfD placed second in the recent European Parliament elections, ahead of the governing Social Democrats and their coalition partners.
Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) released data this year showing that foreigners, who make up just 14.6 percent of the population, are implicated in 58.5 percent of all violent crimes in the country.
