BERLIN: Two people were killed at a school near Berlin and a suspect arrested, police said on Thursday, with local media saying the victims were an 18-year-old woman student and a 30-year-old man.
Police said in a statement that they received several phone calls at around 1:45pm local time about the incident at a secondary school in the town of Gosen-Neu Zittau, set in a forested area just outside the German capital in Brandenburg state.
“Two fatally injured people were found at the scene,” police said, adding that they currently believe the incident was “linked to a relationship, not a random act”.
They confirmed that a 19-year-old German man had been arrested and was “strongly suspected” of being responsible. The Maerkische Allgemeine Zeitung (MAZ) newspaper reported online that he was the ex-boyfriend of the woman killed, citing sources close to the investigation.
It said the 30-year-old man was believed to have died while trying to intervene, without specifying whether a knife or other weapon had been used. The speaker of Brandenburg’s regional parliament Ulrike Liedtke called the incident a “cowardly femicide”.
“The fact that we once again had to witness deadly violence against a woman fills me with deep sorrow and anger. “I am shaken that a citizen who showed moral courage and wanted to help also lost his life in this terrible act,” Liedtke said.
Published in Dawn, August 28th, 2026
