Around 6,000 refugee children missing in Germany: Report
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Children arrive along with other aboard a Greek coast guard boat to the port of Mytilene on the Greek island of Lesbos on March 29, 2016, after being rescued by Frontext and Greek coast guards. ©AFP
Thousands of unaccompanied children and teenagers have reportedly disappeared in Germany over the past year amid concerns that they might have fallen into the hands of criminals and human smugglers.
The German news organization Funke Mediengruppe reported on Monday that 5,835 refugee minors from countries in Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia went missing in the Western European country in 2015, of whom 555 are under the age of 14.
The majority of the missing and unaccompanied minors were from Afghanistan, Syria, Eritrea, Morocco and Algeria.
This is while officials in Berlin have no indications of their whereabouts.
German Interior Ministry Spokesman Johannes Dimroth confirmed media reports that the government had recently informed parliament about the disappearance of nearly 6,000 refugee children.
Dimroth added that the actual number of the missing children could be even slightly higher than the current statistics. He, however, could not give reasons for their disappearance.
Berlin has come under fire by politicians of the Green Party for not taking serious actions to address the problem.
German Federal Ministry for Family Affairs Spokeswoman Verena Herb, however, said the government is very sensitive about the problem, and has recently taken new legal and practical measures to address it.
“We cannot rule out that these children and teenagers might fall into the hands of criminals,” Herb noted.
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