World Bulletin/News Desk

A 20-year-old Eritrean Muslim man was killed in a knife attack Tuesday morning in the eastern German city of Dresden, the city’s prosecution office announced.

The spokesman for Dresden prosecution office, Lorenz Haase, stated that they launched an extensive investigation into the murder.

"We do not have any information about the background and perpetrators of the murder," said Haase.

Saxony's Left Party Deputy Juliane Nagel pointed that the potential racist background of the murder should be taken into consideration.

Saxony's Green Party Deputy Valentin Lippmann said that the result of the police investigation should be awaited.

According to police, Bahray went out for shopping on Monday evening, but did not return home. On Tuesday morning, Bahray was found dead outside his house.

PEGIDA owes much of its success to the peculiarities of Dresden, a Baroque city destroyed by the Allies in 1945 and since painstakingly restored.

In Communist times, Dresden was known as "Valley of the Clueless" because western media signals could not be picked up.

It has a tradition of holding some of Europe's biggest neo-Nazi marches on Feb. 13 to commemorate the firebombing of the city during the final months of World War Two.

Nattke estimates 2,000 neo-Nazis and right-wing soccer hooligans attend PEGIDA rallies, joining ordinary conservatives.

Added to a traditional conservatism, many people in Dresden and the surrounding state of Saxony are disillusioned with politics because the same party -- Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU) -- has ruled the state since reunification 25 years ago.

Xenophobia is also fed by the city's low number of immigrants and disproportionately small Muslim population.

Although its asylum laws are among the most liberal in the western world, Germany has never become a genuine melting pot of cultures.