A 26-year-old Afghan man was shot and killed by special forces of the Saxony-Anhalt State Criminal Police in the city of Schönebeck, near Magdeburg, early on the morning of March 7, 2025.
According to a police statement, the events unfolded as follows: in the early hours of the morning, a 26-year-old Afghan man allegedly got into an altercation with a 26-year-old German man in a multi-family house. The suspect then allegedly threatened the police officers who were called to the scene with a knife, prompting the deployment of special units from the State Criminal Police.
The police report states that the man and the German man had a confrontation in the stairwell around 4:30 a.m. The motives behind the altercation and whether a prior dispute had occurred are still unclear, according to the investigation’s current state.
Eyewitnesses, who are quoted in a report by the Bild newspaper, described a man with an “foreign appearance” acting erratically in the streets before the incident. It is unclear whether this man and the suspect were the same person.
As the situation escalated, the police officers fired their weapons at the suspect, who was threatening them with a knife. According to a report in the Magdeburger Volksstimme, the special forces had previously fired three warning shots at around 4:50 a.m., but the suspect did not react. The police in Magdeburg, however, have not yet confirmed this information, according to the Bild article.
The Afghan man was taken to a nearby hospital, where he later died from his gunshot wound.
The police stated that the Afghan man was carrying identification documents at the time of the incident, which facilitated his quick identification.