Midnight quarrel in Nicosia turns deadly

A man was killed after a midnight quarrel in downtown Nicosia on Friday night, with police saying they arrested a suspect in the morning on murder charges.

According to police, law enforcement authorities in the capital were notified Saturday morning, around 15 minutes after midnight, about a foreign man who was injured on Salaminos Street just outside the walled city.

Additional reports said an Indian male got into a fight with a man from Pakistan, with a knife being pulled during the quarrel and a third individual, another man from India, trying to break up the fight according to local media.

State forensic examiners Sofocles Sofocleous and Angeliki Papetta rushed to the scene, where they determined the Pakistani man, aged 28, had died.

The third person, aged 24, who was also injured during the incident, was rushed to the Emergency Room at Nicosia General Hospital. He was treated for minor injuries and later released, according to an official police report.

A 26-year-old man was later arrested only minutes after police published his photo in connection with the incident.

There was no information about a possible motive but police said crime investigators were treating the case as murder.

Additional reports said the three men were together in a building when the incident took place, with local media speculating the fight was over a financial dispute.