Munich police officer seriously injured in metro station shooting

A police officer has been shot in the head at a Munich metro station after a man grabbed her service pistol and opened fire, also injuring two bystanders.

The officer’s injuries were considered life-threatening, while those to the two bystanders shot at the Unterföhring station were less serious, the Munich police spokesman Marcus da Gloria Martins said.

Police shot and injured the gunman, who is now in custody. Police said it was not a terrorist incident.

"The sole male perpetrator was motivated by personal reasons," Martins said.

Martins said that the unidentified man had tried to push at least one police officer in front of an incoming train, leading to a scuffle during which he took the female officer's gun and fired.

Last July, an 18-year-old, David Ali Sonboly, shot dead nine people at a Munich shopping mall before turning the gun on himself, having spent a year planning the rampage.

Police said the German-Iranian teen was "obsessed" with mass murderers such Norwegian right-wing fanatic Anders Behring Breivik and had no links to ISIS.

And in March, an axe-wielding attacker wounded nine people in a bloody rampage at a railway station in the western city of Dusseldorf. The 36-year-old Kosovan national had been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic with a history of high anxiety and self-harm, police said, ruling out a terrorist motive.

German authorities have been on high alert since a series of attacks claimed by ISIS.