We will use your email address only for sending you newsletters. Please see our Privacy Notice for details of your data protection rights.

Sign up fornow and never miss the top politics stories again.

The authorities in the German town of Rheinberg, which is near the Rhine metropolis, said it "cannot rule out" the possibility of drunken refugees coming into town to prey on women.

Cologne police are dealing with more than 500 complaints of sexual assault and robbery against young women by gangs of marauding asylum seekers and other immigrants in and around the main station area on New Year's Eve.

Other similar attacks also took place on a smaller scale in several other German cities, including Hamburg and Bielefeld.

Rheinberg has, like most German municipalities, absorbed some of the million-plus migrants allowed into the country in the past year: it has around 300 housed in the Orsoy district of town.