Senior German politicians allegedly tried to pressure police in Cologne to remove the word rape from reports about the mass sexual assaults committed by asylum seekers on New Year's Eve.

The former Cologne police chief was removed from his post in January after it emerged the police had covered up the scale and seriousness of the assaults.

At the time it was widely believed police initiated the cover-up over concerns most of perpetrators were foreign nationals.

Now Cologne’s Express newspaper has published a leaked police memo which it claims shows that the cover-up went much higher than previously thought, and was ordered by the state government of North Rhine-Westphalia.

The new allegations have left Ralf Jäger, the state’s interior minister, facing calls for his resignation.

Around 600 women were victims of sexual assault in the area around Cologne main railway station on New Year’s Eve, according to an official report by Mr Jäger published this week.

But the day after the attacks, Mr Jäger’s ministry ordered police to remove references to “rape” from a preliminary report, according to local paper Express.

• 'They were groping us and trying to pull us away', says teenage victim

The newspaper has published what it says is an internal police memo of a phone call from the interior ministry on New Year’s Day.