A local councillor for the far-Right Alternative for Germany (AfD) was shot in the jaw on Tuesday when police tried to arrest him over an alleged plot to mount a Nazi-inspired coup.

Kurt Hättasch, a councillor in the town of Grimma in Saxony, was operated on in hospital after sustaining a gunshot wound during an early-morning raid.

The councillor confronted police with a gun, leading to an officer firing two warning shots.

Mr Hättasch’s injuries are not said to be life threatening and an investigation is under way into the circumstances of the injury.

The AfD politician was one of eight men arrested as part of an investigation into an alleged neo-Nazi terror cell.

Federal prosecutors say that the men, all in their early twenties, formed a group called the “Saxonian Separatists”, who had allegedly made military preparations for the collapse of society.

The men set up their organisation in late 2020 in the expectation that German society would fall apart in a so-called “Day X”, the prosecution service said.

Members engaged in weapons training and planned to seize control of parts of east Germany, which they allegedly wanted to ethnically cleanse of “undesirable groups of people”.

They stocked up on military equipment including camouflage suits, combat helmets, gas masks and protective waistcoats, the prosecution added, and were “inspired by National Socialism”.

Two further suspects in the case are members of the AfD, though not serving politicians, according to a report by the political magazine Der Spiegel.

The eight suspects have been named as Kurt H, Karl K, Kevin M, Hans-Georg P, Kevin R, Jörg S, Jörn S and Norman T.