Human traffickers are preying on refugees across Europe and forcing them into slave labour or child prostitution, warn Europol

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Young refugees and migrants arriving in Europe are being targeted by child sex trafficking gangs, an EU police chief has said.

With hundreds of thousands fleeing their homelands for the EU, many minors are arriving unaccompanied by adults, making them extremely vulnerable to criminal organisations.

As Europe struggles to cope with the influx of refugees, the chaos has created an environment where human trafficking gangs can prey on children and young women. 

At risk: Organised criminal gangs are targeting child refugees across Europe, putting them at risk of being forced into prostitution and slave labour

'Modern, enterprising, organised criminal gangs go where the opportunity is high and the risk is low,' Brian Donald, Europol's chief of staff, told the Santa Marta international conference on human trafficking in Madrid this weekend.

Newly arrived refugees and migrants are being 'identified for exploitation, especially those of a young age, young women, the unaccompanied', to be forced into prostitution and slave labour, Mr Donald told the conference, The Guardian reports.

Europol and other European law enforcement agencies have registered at least 7,000 unaccompanied children in recent months, but this is believed to only be the tip of the iceberg, with actual numbers estimated to be much higher.

Mr Donald also warned of a cross-over between the organised gangs helping to smuggle refugees and migrants into the EU and human trafficking gangs exploiting them for sex work and slavery.  

Targeted: Children wrapped in emergency blankets stand on a beach as they have disembarked from a small boat on the northern shore of Lesbos, Greece,  on Monday

Vulnerable: Newly arrived refugees and migrants are being 'identified for exploitation, especially those of a young age, young women, the unaccompanied', Europol warns

Tip of the iceberg: Europol and other European law enforcement agencies have registered at least 7,000 unaccompanied children in recent months

A third of smuggling networks are also engaged in other criminal activities, including drugs and human trafficking, he said, calling the refugee camps which have popped up across the EU 'breeding grounds for organised criminal gangs'.

This comes just days after a German man, only known as Silvio S, confessed to killing a four-year-old Bosnian boy after snatching him from a refugee centre last month,

Mohamed Januzi, whose family was seeking asylum in Germany, disappeared while waiting outside Berlin's central registration office for migrants with his mother and two siblings on October 1. 

CCTV showed Mohamed leaving holding the hand of a man believed to be Silvio S, and his body was later found packed in cat litter in the boot of the man's car. 

Long walk: Migrants and refugees arrive to make-shift train station in Sentilj to cross the Slovenian-Austrian border on Sunday

Migrants are escorted by German police to a registration centre, after crossing the Austrian-German border in Wegscheid near Passau, on Sunday

Earlier this year, a group of German women's organisations warned that a 'culture of rape and violence' ruled one of the largest refugee camps in the country. 

Around 5,000 asylum seekers are staying at an old US military bases in Giessen, western Germany, where the situation was reported as dire for women and children.

'It is a fact that women and children are unprotected,' a letter sent to the Minister of Integration and Social Affairs from four women's organisations in August states. 

'This situation is opportune to those men who already regard women as their inferior and treat unaccompanied women as "fair game". 

'As a consequence, there are reports of numerous rapes, sexual assaults and increasingly of forced prostitution. These are not isolated incidents.'