Murder investigation launched after man’s body found in German city where there have been anti-immigrant Pegida marches

Dresden police have launched a murder investigation following the death of an Eritrean man whose blood-soaked body was found outside his home in the east German city.

The refugee, identified as Khaled Idris Bahray, 20, left his flat on Monday evening, according to his five flatmates, all young Eritreans, telling them that he was going to the shops and would be back shortly.

His body was found by a resident of the high-rise housing block in the Leubnitz-Neuostra district the following morning, covered in blood and wounds.

Police initially said there were no suspicious circumstances surrounding his death, saying on Tuesday: “Up to now there are no indications of foul play.”

But after a flurry of activity on social network sites and inquiries by a local journalist from the newspaper MOPO24 as well as from members of the 35,000-strong Eritrean community in Germany as to how it could be ruled out so quickly that the man had been the victim of assault, police said a murder investigation had been launched.

“From the external marks on the corpse it is not possible to deduce what happened. Due to the fact there is reasonable suspicion to indicate an unnatural death, the murder commission is now investigating,” said a police spokesman, Dieter Kroll.

A postmortem is being carried out, the results of which should be known this week.

Some respondents on Twitter and Facebook were quick to suggest a possible connection between the death of Bahray, who was a Muslim, and the rise of the anti-immigrant movement Pegida, which meets in Dresden on Monday nights and this week drew a record crowd of 25,000 demonstrators. Among the protesters is a core of neo-Nazis and violent football hooligans who are known to police.

Other respondents on social media expressed anti-immigrant views. Members of the Eritrean community in Germany told the Guardian that Bahray's flatmates, who have been in Germany for several months, had been scared to leave their home on Monday evenings, having been threatened and shouted out by people they believed were part of the demonstrations.

A candlelit vigil for Bahray was arranged for Wednesday afternoon in Dresden’s Jorge Gomondai Square.