The number of migrant criminal suspects in Germany soared by more than 50 per cent in 2016, data from the Interior Ministry showed on Monday.

Police were hunting 174,000 suspects classed as immigrants in 2016, the data showed, 52.7 per cent more than in the previous year.

Crimes motivated by Islamism also increased by 13.7 per cent. That includes the truck attack on a Berlin Christmas market by a failed Tunisian asylum seeker.

German police were seeking more than 174,000 criminal migrant suspects in 2016, data shows, while crime motivated by Islamism also rose by 13.7 per cent (file image shows police officers arresting a Syrian man accused of smuggling migrants from Austria to Germany)

Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere warned that crimes committed by refugees had 'increased disproportionately' last year.

Migrants accounted for 8.6 percent of all crime suspects in Germany in 2016, up from 5.7 percent the previous year.

Mr De Maiziere blamed the high crime rate among migrants on their housing , saying that many were living in makeshift shelters or sharing crowded rooms in 2016.

The number of attacks on refugee homes has declined for the first time since data started being collected in 2014.

Some 995 were carried out in 2016, compared with 1,031 the previous year.

Under the German system immigrants are classed as people who are applying for asylum, refugees, illegal immigrants and those whose deportation has been temporarily suspended.

Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere (pictured) said crimes committed by migrants had 'risen disproportionately' in 2016, blaming it on their housing situation

The number of German suspects declined by 3.4 percent to 1,407,062.

More than a million migrants have arrived in Germany in the last two years, largely from the Middle East.

Concerns over security and integration initially pushed up the poll ratings of the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD), but support has slipped as the rate of arrivals has slowed.

Chancellor Angela Merkel's party, the Christian Democratic Union, has shown strong gains in recent polls, including in Germany's most populous state of North Rhine-Westphalia.

That region goes to the polls on May 14 in what is being seen as a bellwether for the general election in September.

The UDC is currently level with the Social Democrats on 34 per cent.