Convicted terrorist shot dead after stabbing police officer in Berlin

A convicted Islamic extremist has been shot dead in Berlin after attacking a female police officer with a knife in an apparent terror attack.

Officers were called to the Spandau district in the city’s west overnight (Thursday morning Berlin time) after reports of an armed man.

The 41-year-old attacker, named by prosecutors as convicted Iraqi terrorist Rafik Y., stabbed an arriving officer in the neck before he was shot dead by her partner.

The officer was rushed to hospital for emergency surgery, and also suffered a bullet wound to her kidney from a stray round.

Berlin police had treated the attack as a random act of violence until Rafik Y. was identified.

Chief prosecutor Dirk Feuerberg confirmed the man was known to authorities and had served a lengthy jail sentence for terror offences.

“The person killed is an Iraqi citizen known to us who was convicted in 2008 of membership in a foreign terrorist organisation and sentenced to eight years imprisonment,” Mr Feuerberg said in a statement.

Rafiq Y. was one of three men jailed over a plot to assassinate then Iraqi prime minister Ayad Allawi.

He was also convicted for belonging to the terrorist organization Ansar al-Islam, a group founded in Kurdistan with links to al-Qaeda.

The local Bild newspaper reports the attacker had only had his electronic monitoring tag removed in the hours before the incident.