Two police officers shot dead during traffic stop in Germany

Two police officers have been shot to death on a rural road in western Germany while on a routine patrol.

The shooting happened during a traffic check near Kusel at about 4.20am local time on Monday, police in the southwestern city of Kaiserslautern said.

Two men were later arrested in connection with the killings, police said. One of the suspects, a 38-year-old man, will be presented to court in Kaiserslautern, police in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate said in a statement.

Police had also detained a 32-year-old man and were investigating his involvement in the crime, they added. Both suspects are German citizens, Spiegel magazine reported, adding that one of the suspects was a trader of hunted game animals.

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The officers killed had radioed that shots were being fired, police spokesman Bernhard Christian Erfort told n-tv television.

But reinforcements who arrived at the scene were unable to help the 24-year-old woman and 29-year-old man.

Mr Erfort said he did not know whether the officers had seen something particular about the assailants’ vehicle that they wanted to check during the stop or whether it was just a routine check.

German news agency dpa, citing unidentified security sources, said that the officers reported finding dead game in the car before the shooting started.

But what exactly happened remained unclear, as did a possible motive for the shooting.

Following the attack, police called on local drivers not to pick up hitchhikers in the Kusel area as they hunted for the perpetrators there and in neighbouring Saarland state.

Police used helicopters and sniffer dogs in their search.

The younger officer killed in Monday’s incident was still studying at a police academy, the GdP police union said.

“Regardless of the motive, this crime is reminiscent of an execution and shows that the police risk their lives for our security every day,” interior minister Nancy Faeser tweeted. – PA/Reuters