Police shoot man with ax before European Championship 2024 match in Germany

A man brandishing an axe in a street full of soccer fans was shot dead by police in Hamburg, Germany, on Sunday, just hours before the city was to host a European Championship match.

The man threatened police officers with “a pickaxe and a firebomb,” a police spokesman said on Sunday. When he didn’t respond to warnings, he was shot, police said.

The man was injured and was being treated, they confirmed. No fans or police officers were injured.

The incident took place in Hamburg’s nightlife district, a part of the city known as the Reeperbahn and packed with restaurants and bars. At that time, the area was packed with thousands of fans who had come to watch the Netherlands play against Poland on Sunday afternoon.

According to a Hamburg police spokeswoman and videos of the incident posted online, the man emerged from a small restaurant with a small, double-bladed axe and a fire bomb and threatened nearby officers.

As fans watched just feet away, the man — dressed all in black — shouted from behind a police barrier and walked toward a group of about a dozen officers, several of whom had their guns pointed at him on either side of the barrier. He held the small axe in one hand and what appeared to be a bottle with a rag stuck in the neck in the other.

When a police officer sprayed pepper spray in the man’s direction, he turned and began running into the street as fans moved out of his way. Officers surrounded him a short distance down the narrow street and shortly afterwards at least four gunshots rang out and the man fell to the ground.

Police said the man was injured, but they could provide no further updates on his condition. He was put in an ambulance and taken away.

The gunshots, captured in several videos posted online, were a sudden and shocking disruption to what had been a festive lunchtime atmosphere. Within minutes, dozens of police officers had gathered and set up a cordon around the scene of the shooting, and loudspeaker announcements — and the impending kickoff — cleared the area.

The shooting site was a 10-minute walk from the city’s official fan zone, which was packed with many more thousands of fans at the time, and a short train ride from the 57,000-seat Volkspark Stadium, where the Netherlands and Poland were due to go. meet in the first of three tournament matches scheduled for Sunday.

The shooting took place on the third day of the month-long tournament that brings together the continent’s top 24 teams every four years, amid an increasing police presence.

German authorities said last week that around 22,000 police officers would be on duty each day of the tournament, supplemented by hundreds of additional police officers from participating countries.