AN axe-wielding man allegedly attacked a group of patrol officers in a busy commercial district in New York, injuring two before he was shot and killed.

A MAN wielding an axe has turned a busy New York street corner into a scene of bloody chaos, chopping one cop in the back of the head and slicing a second cop in the arm before two other officers shot him dead on the spot.

Officer Kenneth Healy, 25, had just five months on the job when madman Zale Thompson, 32, of Queens — a “scholarly” but “weird” recent convert to Islam — fractured the back of his skull with one swing of a small, blue-handled hatchet around 2 p.m.

A 29-year-old woman walking a half-block away from the madness was struck in her back by a stray police bullet and was in stable condition, according to police sources.

The NYPD is investigating whether Islamic extremism played any role in the seemingly random attack, which left the rookie in serious but stable condition Thursday night.

“There’s nothing we know at this time that would indicate that [Islamic terrorism] is the case,” Police Commissioner William Bratton said at a press conference at Jamaica Hospital Thursday night.

“That’s what the investigation will attempt to determine,” Bratton said as Healy, the son of a 34-year Nassau County detective, underwent surgery.

The second injured officer, whose name was not released, was “conscious and alert,” also at Jamaica Hospital.

“The cops yelled ‘Drop it!’” recalled rattled eyewitness Larry Bethune, 44, of Hollis, Queens, who watched the violence unspool at the corner of Jamaica Avenue and 160th Street..

“He raised his arm up high and brought it straight down on the cop’s head,” he added.

“The cop went down to the ground, face first … The cop’s just lying there with blood pouring down his face. He didn’t move.”

Another witness, Kelli Reddica, 24, recalled hearing seven police bullets ring out as Thompson was taken down — and seeing the young cop’s horrible head injury.

“He looked like he couldn’t move, and blood was gushing out of his head,” Reddica said of Healy. “Blood just drenched the side of his face,” she said.

Thompson — whose Facebook page includes Arabic script and an old, black and white photograph of a black-scarved militant — is a “very educated” proponent of “black power” and was a graduate of the College of New Rochelle in Harlem, said a classmate who asked not to be named.

“He always spoke very positively,” said the classmate, who was unaware of Thompson’s recent Islamic leanings. “I would call him a scholar and an intellectual,” she said.

But former neighbors at Thompson’s East New York, Brooklyn, address said that in recent months he had become “weird” and argumentative, constantly fighting with his girlfriend and mother before moving to Jamaica earlier this year.

In addition to the two cops struck with the hatchet, the officers who opened fire were also rushed to hospitals for ringing in their ears, a source said.