Domestic intelligence staff in Germany's North-Rhine Westphalia are suspected of being involved in extremist activity online, according to a media report on Thursday.

The state's interior ministry said three of the four suspected cases among its ranks had worked for an intelligence observation team, the Rheinische Post newspaper reported.

In response to a question of whether the suspected staff were also involved in monitoring right-wing extremists, the ministry said "yes, it included right-wing extremists," according to the newspaper. The observation team was involved in all areas of investigation, including right-wing extremism.

"The intelligence team concerned was disbanded and leadership changes were made," the ministry told the Rheinische Post.

Three of the people belonged to the observation group, while one was an administrative clerk in the interior ministry's police department. They were flagged in social networks and chats for sending videos with "anti-Islam or xenophobic connotations."

Colleagues who received such videos flagged the observation team's group chat, the Rheinische Post reported. The police department employee was connected to people from the right-wing extremist scene on Facebook, the ministry said.

The state's interior ministry took disciplinary action as soon as they became aware, a spokeswoman said. Two weeks ago, five right-wing extremist chat groups were discovered among state police, leading to the suspension of 30 officers.

Last week Herbert Reul, the interior minister of Germany's most populous state, said 100 employees in North Rhine Westphalia's police have been suspected of racism or right-wing extremism since 2017.

According to research by the "Monitor" program on German ARD public television, a chat group with racist content also appeared in the ranks of the Berlin police. Individuals posting there apparently described Muslims as a "fanatical primate culture," equated refugees with rapists or rats and named neo-Nazis as possible "allies" in left-wing demonstrations, according to the report, which was to be broadcast on Thursday evening.

It is said to be the internal chat of a service group of the Berlin police, in which more than 25 officers are said to have exchanged information. Seven people appear to have regularly made clearly racist comments, often in the form of supposed jokes, according to excerpts from the report made available ahead of the broadcast.

Colleagues reportedly often commented on the statements with approval. A supervisor of the group had been informed about racist statements in the chat. In an email, he allegedly asked the officials not to share any criminal content.

Berlin's Interior Minister Andreas Geisel told Monitor: "If the allegations prove to be true, this is absolutely unacceptable and has nothing to do with a modern, cosmopolitan capital police force." Initially, no one could be reached at the regional interior ministry for a statement.