Child refugees in Germany are being radicalised in mosques, joining gangs and roaming the streets with knives aged just 11, a leading youth charity has warned.

The Christian-run organisation ‘Die Arche’ (The Ark) has 33 centres across Germany, supporting over 7,000 children and young people from refugee and socially disadvantaged families.

In a bombshell interview with the Bild newspaper, spokesperson Wolfgang Büscher, who has worked for the NGO for 20 years, said the continuing influx of refugees means Germany is now at breaking point.

‘Our system has collapsed. We are at the end. The main reason for this is the continuing influx of refugees,’ he said. ‘I’m calling for a freeze on refugee admissions, otherwise it would no longer be possible to provide help.’

Meanwhile a social worker at the organisation called Josi warned: ‘The support systems are no longer working. Integration has failed. We can’t do everything.’

The 32-year-old added: ‘The politicians talk and talk and turn a blind eye to the problems. It will escalate and there will be a big bang.’

Büscher added that amongst the young refugees his charity is helping, those of Arab origin in particular are becoming increasingly ‘criminalised and radicalised’.

‘All the problems that refugee policy automatically brings with it, but that nobody really wants to recognise, are concentrated here,’ he said.

‘Young Muslim adolescents in particular show what goes wrong with integration. Eleven-year-olds are already running around with knives here.’

He said many youngsters are ‘lost’ to gangs who recruit them, reeling them in by saying: ‘Come to us if you don’t like the Germans. It’s better with us.’

‘Many’ of the young people who go to the Ark centres attend mosques where radical Islam is preached, Büscher claimed, adding that they refer to moderate places of worship as ‘wimp mosques’.

He added that of the 1,500 young people who are taken care of at Berlin Ark, there are almost no Muslim girls over the age of 13, as ‘they have to stay at home.’

‘I was told that the parents are afraid that our Western values could spread to the young girls. 

‘They would then no longer be allowed to come to us. We no longer reach these families. They live in a bubble, in a different system,’ he said.

He added that staff had informed him about young women being forced into marriage.

He added that such children often come from ‘hotspot schools’ where there are even classes with a 95 per cent proportion of immigrants.

More than 350,000 people applied for asylum in Germany last year – the highest number since 2016.

Opposition figures said the stark figures showed the government was failing to deal with what they called a ‘migration crisis’.

Around one in five – 18 per cent – of Germany’s population are immigrants, with the country the main destination for migrants in Europe.

Büscher’s comments come days after German authorities banned an Islamic organisation in Hamburg and its subsidiary organisations for pursuing radical Islamist goals

Premises belonging to the Islamic Centre Hamburg (IZH) were searched, leading to the group to be banned and four mosques around the country closed as a result of the investigation.

The interior ministry accused the IZH of promoting antisemitism and the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, which is also banned in Germany and classified as a terrorist organisation by the European Union.

Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said in a statement: ‘Today, we banned the Islamisches Zentrum Hamburg, which promotes an Islamist-extremist, totalitarian ideology in Germany.

‘This Islamist ideology is opposed to human dignity, women’s rights, an independent judiciary and our democratic government.’

She said she wanted to make clear that ‘the ban absolutely does not apply to the peaceful practice of the Shi’ite religion’.

A 2020 report on Islamic life in Germany said there were roughly 5.5 million Muslims in Germany’s 83 million population.