An Afghan asylum seeker is under arrest in Germany suspected of stabbing a woman to death because she converted to Christianity.

The victim, Fatima S. 38, was knifed on Saturday in front of a Lidl supermarket in Prien in Bavaria.

The 29-year-old migrant attacked the woman in front of her five and 11-year-old children and she later died from her wounds.

An Afghan asylum seeker is under arrest in Germany suspected of stabbing to death a woman outside a supermarket on Saturday evening

Eyewitnesses said he stabbed her in the head and then slit her throat as her cries were heard for hundreds of feet around.

One horrified witness said: 'I heard angry cries like, 'He has a knife, he wants to stab her! It was bad. A brave citizen tried to intervene and save the woman, everything was full of blood, it was inconceivably terrible.'

And another said the alleged perpetrator first sat on a bench opposite the supermarket entrance before he attacked.

The suspect was detained in a psychiatric hospital after shoppers including an off duty policewoman overpowered him.

Now police confirm they are probing the possibility the killer struck because the mother-of-two - who arrived in Germany in 2011 - was a Christian convert.

'It's a possibility that we're exploring,' said a police spokesman, adding that the victim and the alleged attacker knew each other,

The knifeman had arrived in Germany in 2013 and was residing at an asylum-seeker shelter.

Germany took in more than a million refugees since 2015, and some have taken on the Christian faith.

The murder happened on Saturday evening at around 6.45pm in front of a busy supermarket in Prien, a town in the German state of Bavaria.