Teenager followed catering worker down into basement at centre in Menen

A teenage Afghan immigrant has been charged with raping a female worker at an asylum seekers' centre in Belgium, authorities said, prompting outrage from anti-immigrant politicians.

The 16-year-old Afghan asylum seeker followed a worker from a catering firm into the basement and raped her at the centre in Menen, near the French border, prosecutors said.

The judge ordered him detained in youth custody until his next hearing.

Many right-wing protesters took to the streets after the Cologne sex attacks, which they blamed on the influx of migrants into Germany

A spokeswoman for the Red Cross said it was the first time in 25 years such an alleged incident had occurred at one of the organisation's asylum seeker centres in the country.

'Two weeks ago we gave a course about how to treat women in Flanders and the boy was present there,' the spokeswoman said.

The allegation feeds into to a highly charged debate over immigration in Europe, particularly since authorities in neighbouring Germany accused gangs of migrants of sexually assaulting women in Cologne on New Year's Eve.

'I repeat: people who need a course on how to treat women should not be there in the first place,' Tom Van Grieken, leader of anti-immigrant party Vlaams Belang said on Twitter.

Belgium received 35,476 asylum requests in 2015, more than twice the level of 2014.

The incident echoes that of Swedish social worker Alexandra Mezher, who it is alleged was stabbed to death by Somalian migrant Youssaf Khaliif Nuur at an adolescent migrant centre where she worked in Gothenberg, Sweden last month.

It also follows the Cologne sex attacks on New Year's Eve, in which hundreds of women filed sexual assault complaints after wave of attacks in the German city.

A mob of men - believed to be of North African and Arab origin - were said to have molested and robbed women after congregating at the city's central station.

Meanwhile an Iraqi migrant raped a 10-year-old boy at a swimming pool in Vienna earlier this month.