9,000 refugee children are missing

NINE thousand unaccompanied refugee children have gone missing in Germany since the start of 2016.

The Federal Criminal Office (BKA) made the figures public yesterday as the debate over unregulated immigration continued to intensify.

Most of the 8,991 children were aged 14 to 17 but 867 were under 13. Many were from Afghanistan, Syria, Somalia, Algeria and Morocco.

The figure was double that of early January when 4,749 unaccompanied children were known to be missing from refugee centres.

Officials confirmed they did not know what had happened to them but said there was no evidence of them falling into criminal gangs.

A BKA spokesman said: “In many cases, it’s not like the children left without a plan. They wanted to visit their parents, relatives or friends in other German cities or even other European countries.”

The BKA said it was hard to keep up with the numbers as many arrived with no identity papers and spelt their name in several ways.

In February Europol estimated at least 10,000 unaccompanied refugee children had gone missing after arriving in Europe. Now it says the number was “considerably higher.”

The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe warned unaccompanied minors from war zones were “the most vulnerable refugee group” to grooming by criminal gangs and sexual exploitation.

On Sunday, German chancellor Angela Merkel’s deputy accused her of underestimating the strain on society of integrating over a million asylum seekers in the past year.

Vice chancellor Sigmar Gabriel said: “We should be setting the right conditions so we can manage this.”