I understand what the modal verbs "sollen and "dürfen" mean in regards to "shall/ought to" and "is allowed to" respectively. But how do these verbs function in regards to these following sentences?
I usually read such usage in newspapers or websites so I'm guessing it must be a more formal method of stating something but it's usage just seems strange (to my current level of german). And if it were to be a more formal way of saying things, would this be actually used in everyday casual speech or just the newspapers?
"Elitesoldat soll Top-Terroristen vor drei Jahren getötet haben"
That sounds very odd to me - it seems like the paper is ordering the soldier to kill, like they're saying the soldier shall have the terrorist killed.
"X soll Y ermordet haben."
So the pattern so far seems to be that they tend to be used about bad stuff..
"Dabei dürfte etwas schief gegangen sein, denn es kam zur Detonation"
That sounds to me like they said that something awful was allowed to happen because then it detonated but I'm sure I'm missing the actual meaning.