German police say four officers have been shot and wounded during a raid in which they had planned to confiscate the weapons of an anti-government extremist.

Police said that the 49-year-old man in the Bavarian town of Georgensgmuend legally possessed weapons but that officers had planned to seize them due to his "unreliability."The ministry said the man had immediately started shooting when police and members of a special task force raided his apartment.

They say that the man immediately opened fire and four officers were wounded, some of them seriously. He was arrested.

Police said the man, whom they didn't identify, also sustained injuries in the raid and is a member of the so-called Reich Citizens' Movement, an extremist group whose adherents do not recognize the German state.

The Reich Citizens' Movement, which is under surveillance by Germany's domestic intelligence agency, has been compared to the sovereign citizen movement in the United States.