Belgian police have arrested 13 people during a dozen raids overnight, smashing plot to kill police officers “in public roads and in police stations”, prosecutors say.

Two Islamist suspects were shot dead during a gun battle after one of the police raids in the eastern town of Verviers on Thursday night.

“The group was on the verge of carrying out terrorist attacks to kill police officers in public roads and in police stations,” spokesman Eric Van der Sijpt told a news conference.

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Police found Kalashnikov assault rifles, explosives, ammunition and communications equipment – along with police uniforms that could have been used for the plot, he said.

Belgium will also seek the extradition of two Belgian suspects from France, although there is no link seen with last week’s Paris attacks, prosecutors told a news conference a day.

“I can confirm that we started this investigation before the attacks in Paris,” Van der Sijpt said.

The “important arrests” meant that “not only a terror cell but also their support network” have been dismantled, he added.

Elsewhere, scores of German police have raided alleged Islamist sites in Berlin, arresting two men suspected of being part of a group planning to carry out an attack in Syria, police said.

Around 250 police officers carried out the raids on 11 sites in the German capital, arresting the two men of Turkish origin aged 41 and 43, police said in a statement.

One of the men, identified as Ismet D, 41, is suspected of “leading an Islamist extremist group made up of Turkish and Russian nationals from (the Caucasus regions’ of) Chechnya and Dagestan,” the police said.

The other man, identified as Emin F, 43, is suspected of organising the financing, the statement said, adding there was “no indication that the group planned attacks inside Germany”.

The two men were part of a group of five people, all of Turkish origin, who had been under investigation by police and prosecutors for several months, they added.

The were under suspicion of preparing a serious act of violence in Syria and money laundering.

The German raids came just hours after two suspected Islamists were killed in a massive police raid on suspected jihadists in Belgium and a week after Islamist attacks in Paris claimed 17 lives.

Chancellor Angela Merkel on Thursday vowed to heighten security measures against Islamist militants in the wake of the Paris attacks, vowing that Germany would not be divided by extremism of any kind.

“Hate preachers, violent delinquents who act in the name of Islam, those behind them, and the intellectual arsonists of international terrorism will be rigorously fought with all legal means at the disposal of the state,” she said in a speech to parliament.