BERLIN (Dispatches) -- Two U.S. soldiers have been arrested in Germany over the death of a young man at a funfair in the west of the country, German police said.
“Following the murder of a 28-year-old man, two suspects were arrested... They are American servicemen,” police in the western city of Treves said in a statement.
The death occurred when an altercation broke out between several people at a funfair in the small town of Wittlich, in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate between Treves and Koblenz, on Saturday night.
During the fight the victim “was stabbed to death”, and “four people, two men and two women, ran away from the scene of the crime”, police said, citing witnesses.
Two members of the fleeing group were quickly identified, as a 25- and 26-year-old whom police arrested before handing them over to U.S. authorities, who will take charge of the case “in accordance with NATO statutes”, the police added.
“We’ve never experienced anything like this here”, said Wittlich mayor Joachim Rodenkirch when interviewed by the local press.
The United States has had troops stationed in Germany since World War II, but their numbers have declined since the fall of the Berlin Wall from around 200,000 soldiers in 1990 to 34,500 today.
In fact, Germany hosts the largest portion of U.S. troops in Europe. This is also more military personnel than the U.S. keeps in any other country except Japan.
Germany is home to five of the seven U.S. Army garrisons in Europe (the other two are in Belgium and Italy), and the U.S. Army Europe is headquartered at the garrison in Wiesbaden, a city close to Frankfurt in central western Germany.
These five garrisons, each consisting of various installations at different locations, currently comprise around 29,000 military personnel. This number includes the U.S. Marine Corps Forces of Europe and Africa, which are headquartered in Böblingen, southwestern Germany, as part of the U.S. Army Garrison Stuttgart.
In addition, roughly 9,600 U.S. Air Force personnel are spread across various locations in Germany, including the two U.S. Air Force bases of Ramstein and Spangdahlem.
But the extent of U.S. military presence in Germany is not limited to personnel: The U.S. also keeps planes at other non-U.S. air force bases in Germany. Additionally, an estimated 20 nuclear weapons are believed to be kept at Germany’s Büchel Air Base in western Germany — something which has attracted much criticism from Germans.
Another contentious arrangement is the fact that the Ramstein Air Base is used as a control center for drone strikes in Yemen and elsewhere.