POLICE SHOOT KNIFE- WIELDING MAN AT BERLIN CATHEDRAL

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Berlin, June 3: Police shot and wounded a knife- wielding man inside Berlin’s main cathedral on Sunday but said there was no indication the assailant had a “terrorist” motive.

Officers cordoned off the entrances to the landmark in the heart of the German capital after the incident, in which one policeman was also hurt by what was believed to be a police bullet.

About 100 people were visiting the cathedral at the time of the incident and had been evacuated by staff by the time two police officers arrived at the scene.

“Shortly after 4 pm ( 1400 GMT) police shot at a rampaging man at Berlin Cathedral,” police said in a tweet.

“He was wounded in the leg.”

A spokesman later added that the man was a 53- year- old Austrian who had been brandishing a knife and was “verbally aggressive”. When the two officers arrived at the scene, the man was at the altar.

The iron- domed Protestant cathedral, one of the city’s top tourist attractions, is on Museum Island off east Berlin’s main Unter den Linden boulevard and close to the Alexanderplatz shopping district.

“Based on what we know so far, we have no information that the suspect in any way had a terrorist or Islamist motive,” a police spokesman said.

An AFP reporter said the entrances to the building were blocked off with red- and- white police tape and several officers with automatic weapons were patrolling the scene.