The severed hands of an Eritrean asylum seeker were found on a German highway; police were unable to locate the rest of her body.
November 18, 2025
A German police car on a motorway in Saxony. Europa Press.
The security crisis gripping Germany has once again produced a disturbing scene. The severed hands found this Monday on the A45 motorway in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia belong to a 32-year-old Eritrean woman , an asylum seeker residing in a reception center in Bonn , more than 100 kilometers from where the hands were discovered.
The case has shocked the German public because there is no explanation for how the woman's limbs ended up in the middle of the highway: no accident, no vehicle, no trace of blood, no body . Just two human hands placed on the road at three in the morning for reasons that, for now, remain unanswered.
The incident began when a driver alerted the police after seeing "strange objects" on the road. Officers discovered they were two severed hands and closed the road to inspect the area. Despite a thorough search, no crime scene, accident debris, drag marks, or other body parts were found.
The identification came through fingerprint analysis, which confirmed that the hands belonged to a woman of Eritrean origin registered at an asylum seeker center along with her three-month-old baby, now in official custody. The woman had not been reported missing before the discovery.
Investigators searched her accommodation in Bonn but found no signs of violence or anything that might explain her disappearance. In a statement, the Hagen Police acknowledged that: "The searches have not yielded any conclusive information and the circumstances of the crime remain completely unknown."
Forensic experts are now working to determine how the hands were amputated , while detectives try to reconstruct the victim's route and whether her remains could have been transported in a vehicle and deliberately dumped on the highway.
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