World

BRUSSELS — European Union countries on Wednesday approved a 3-billion-euro ($3.32 billion) fund for Turkey to improve living conditions for refugees there in exchange for Ankara ensuring fewer of them migrate on to Europe.

The EU is counting on the deal to lower the number of asylum seekers arriving in Europe after over a million streamed onto the continent in 2015, mainly by sea from Turkey, with figures indicating little sign of the flow ebbing so far this year.

All 28 EU countries signed off on the proposal at a meeting in Brussels after Italy dropped its opposition to the plan, which was first agreed with Ankara in November, 2015.

The bloc's executive European Commission welcomed the decision on Turkey, currently home to an estimated 2.5 million refugees from the civil war in Syria next door.

"Turkey now hosts one of the world's largest refugee communities and has committed to significantly reducing the numbers of migrants crossing into the EU," said Johannes Hahn, Commissioner for Neighbourhood Policy and Enlargement.

"The Facility for Refugees in Turkey will go straight to the refugees, providing them with education, health and food. The improvement of living conditions and the offering of a positive perspective will allow refugees to stay closer to their homes."

Prime Minister Mark Rutte of the Netherlands, the current holder of the EU's rotating presidency, said cooperation with Turkey on the migration crisis would also focus on targeting human traffickers who have arranged passage for many people.

Europe is saddled with its worst migration crisis since World War II. This has put strain on security and social systems in some EU states and resolving the problem has become an urgent policy priority for governments since it has fuelled support for anti-foreigner groups, nationalists and populists.

The crisis has bitterly divided EU members, as underlined by the fact that it took the 28 states more than two months to agree on the funding for the Turkey scheme even after their leaders approved setting it up back in November.

The EU would provide 1 billion euros from its own budget, twice as much as initially offered. The rest is to come from 28 governments, with Germany being the top contributor at 427.5 million euros in 2016.

Britain would follow with this year's contribution of 327.6 million euros, France at 309.2 million euros, Italy at 224.9 million and Spain at 152.8 million, according to figures provided by the European Commission.

Italian reservations

The UN refugee agency UNHCR says more than 67,000 people arrived in Europe via the Mediterranean Sea so far this year, entering mainly through Greece, as well as Italy.

Struggling with its own weak economy and large debt loads, Italy unblocked the funding only after Brussels said it would exempt contributions to the Turkey fund in calculating EU countries' budget deficits. Under EU rules, countries must keep their budget shortfalls low or face disciplinary action.

Italy wanted to exempt more migration-related spending from its budget gap and sought to agree a figure of about 3.2 billion euros this year. The European Commission refused to endorse a lump-sum up front and said that any such spending would be analysed separately after it takes place.

But on Wednesday, Rome secured an additional declaration before agreeing to the fund, in which it says it still "strongly expects" Brussels will exempt from its deficit figures "the full amount of costs" it incurred from 2011 when a conflict in its ex-colony Libya started and triggered higher migration to Italy.

That potentially opens way for more back and forth between Brussels and Rome as the latter seeks to win more financial breathing space from the Commission. 

SEOUL/TOKYO — Japan put its military on alert on Wednesday to shoot down any North Korean rocket that threatens it, while South Korea warned the North it would pay a "severe price" if it goes ahead with a satellite launch that South Korea considers a missile test.

North notified UN agencies on Tuesday of its plan to launch what it called an "earth observation satellite" some time between February 8 and 25.

North Korea has said it has a sovereign right to pursue a space programme by launching rockets, although the United States and other governments suspect that such launches are in reality tests of its missiles.

"We have defences ready to deal with all threats, but in view of the announcement I have put the Self-Defence Force's Aegis destroyers and our PAC-3 units on alert and issued an order to shoot down any ballistic missile threat," Japan's defence minister, Gen Nakatani, told media briefing.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said he would work with the United States and others to "strongly demand" that North Korea refrain from what he described as a planned missile launch.

Tension rose in East Asia last month after North Korea's fourth nuclear test, this time of what it said was a hydrogen bomb.

A rocket launch coming so soon after the nuclear test would raise concern that North Korea plans to fit nuclear warheads on its missiles, giving it the capability to launch a strike against South Korea, Japan and possibly targets as far away as the US West Coast.

North Korea last launched a long-range rocket in December 2012, sending an object it described as a communications satellite into orbit.

South Korea said the North should immediately call off the launch, which is a violation of UN Security Council resolutions, the South's presidential Blue House said in a statement.

"North Korea's notice of the plan to launch a long-range missile, coming at a time when there is a discussion for security council sanctions on its fourth nuclear test, is a direct challenge to the international community," the Blue House said.

"We strongly warn that the North will pay a severe price... if it goes ahead with the long-range missile launch plan," it said.

'Extremely concerned'

China, under US pressure to use its influence to rein in the isolated North, said North Korea's right to space exploration was restricted under UN resolutions.

China is North Korea's sole main ally though China disapproves of its nuclear programme.

"We are extremely concerned about this," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang told a briefing.

"In the present situation, we hope North Korea exercises restraint on the issue of launching satellites, acts cautiously and does not take any escalatory steps that may further raise tensions on the Korean Peninsula."

Reports of the planned launch drew fresh US calls for tougher UN sanctions that are already under discussion in response to North Korea's January 6 nuclear test.

State Department spokesman John Kirby said the United Nations needed to "send the North Koreans a swift, firm message".

A spokeswoman for the International Maritime Organisation, a UN agency, said the agency had been told by North Korea it planned to launch the "Kwangmyongsong" satellite.

North Korea said the launch would be conducted in the morning one day during the announced period, and notified the coordinates for the locations where the rocket boosters and the cover for the payload would drop.

Those locations are expected to be in the Yellow Sea off the Korean peninsula west coast and in the Pacific Ocean to the east of the Philippines, Pyongyang said.

South Korea told commercial airliners to avoid flying in areas of the rocket's possible flight path during the period.

The launch is likely to be from the North's Tongchang-ri station near the Chinese border.

US officials said last week North Korea was believed to be preparing for a test launch of a long-range rocket, after activity at the site was observed by satellite.

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration said Tuesday it will propose quadrupling what it spends on its troops and training in Europe, as part of the US military's accelerating effort to deter Russia.

President Barack Obama, in his final budget request to Congress, will ask for $3.4 billion — up from $789 million for the current budget year — for what the Pentagon calls its European Reassurance Initiative, which was announced in 2014 in response to Russia's annexation of Crimea and incursion into eastern Ukraine. The president was also calling for a 50 per cent increase in spending on the war against the Daesh terror group, to $7.5 billion.

Defence Secretary Ash Carter, giving an overview of the administration's proposed 2017 defense budget of $582.7 billion, described Russia as a growing challenge for the United States. He said the US was taking a "strong and balanced approach" to deterring its former Cold War foe.

"We haven't had to worry about this for 25 years, and while I wish it were otherwise, now we do," Carter said in a speech to the Economic Club of Washington.

Obama, warning that Russia had taken an "aggressive posture" near NATO countries, called it a "challenging and important time" for the alliance, whose members in Europe are increasingly concerned about Russia's intentions after its incursions in Ukraine. He said the US had taken decisive steps to bolster NATO since the start of Russia's actions in Ukraine, but that it hadn't been enough.

"It is clear that the United States and our allies must do more to advance our common defense in support of a Europe that is whole, free, and at peace," Obama said.

NATO's top civilian official, Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, issued a statement applauding Carter's proposed increase in spending in Europe.

"This is a clear sign of the enduring commitment by the United States to European security," he said. "It will be a timely and significant contribution to NATO's deterrence, and collective defence."

Addressing the beefed-up request for funding to fight Daesh, Carter said US warplanes have been striking the extremist group in Iraq and Syria with so many precision-guided bombs and rockets that "we're starting to run low" on some types. "So we're investing $1.8 billion in 2017 to buy over 45,000 more of them," he said.

Carter also discussed proposals to boost spending on cutting-edge technologies and efforts to modernise the force to deal with longer-term threats.

The Pentagon's proposed 2017 spending plan will be unveiled next week as part of the federal budget proposal. The officials were not authorised to discuss the matter publicly so spoke on condition of anonymity.

Over the past six months, during trips to Eastern Europe and in NATO meetings, Carter has pledged additional military support for the region.

The 2016 budget for military activities to reassurance allies covered the costs of sending hundreds of US troops in and out of Europe for short deployments, military exercises and other training missions. Carter's proposal to quadruple that amount would allow the US to send more troops to Europe for short-term deployments and also provide additional equipment and improve facilities so that more forces could be accommodated.

In Tallinn, Estonia, last June, Carter stood with defense chiefs from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania and announced that the US would spread 250 tanks, armored vehicles and other military equipment across six of the former Soviet bloc nations.

And he promised NATO that the US would contribute weapons, aircraft and forces, including commandos, for the alliance's new rapid reaction force.

The Pentagon has already increased the pace of troop rotations in and out of Europe, providing training and other advice and assistance to the region. The increased US military activity is seen as an effort to deter Russia from taking any further aggressive action against any other nations there.

Russia's aggressive military intervention in Ukraine has worried Eastern European nations, who fear they may be next. But for much of southern Europe, the bigger concern is the growing threat from the Daesh group.

The proposed spending spike comes a year after the defense department unveiled sweeping plans to consolidate its forces in Europe, taking thousands of US military and civilian personnel out of bases mostly in the United Kingdom and Portugal, in an effort that was expected to save about $500 million each year.

The changes involved mainly army and air force personnel and facilities, and would cut the number of US defense workers in the United Kingdom by about 2,000.

The cutbacks in Europe are being driven largely by overall reductions in the size of the army and Marine Corps, as well as the Pentagon's much-discussed new emphasis on Asia.

KABUL — Coalition aircraft struck Daesh’s new radio station in the eastern Afghan province of Nangarhar late on Monday, part of NATO's escalating campaign to stop the extremist movement taking root in the country.

Attaullah Khogyani, spokesman for the Nangarhar provincial governor, said the overnight raid also involved Afghan ground forces and destroyed a Daesh broadcaster in Achin district, killing 29 militants including eight working on the radio and online operation.

The emergence of fighters loyal to Daesh has introduced a dangerous new element to Afghanistan's long-running civil conflict, with the group violently challenging the much larger Afghan Taliban movement in pockets of the country.

NATO's Resolute Support mission in Kabul, which is led by the US military, confirmed that American forces carried out two counter-terrorism air strikes in Achin district, but declined to provide further details.

Whether the raid succeeds in silencing the transmissions, which have recently increased from an hour a day to 90 minutes, and are now broadcast in Dari as well as the Pashto language, remains to be seen.

But it reflects intensifying efforts by US forces in the fight against Daesh, since a special order gave US forces broader authority to strike at Daesh militants.

"We have increased the pressure, the US has increased the pressure against Daesh in the past few weeks," said Brigadier General Wilson Shoffner, Deputy Chief of Staff for Communications and NATO's top spokesman in Afghanistan.

US officials generally provide only bare details of counter-terrorism operations, but the military has confirmed a series of drone strikes in Nangarhar over recent weeks.

According to the Afghan interior ministry, Afghan and international forces have conducted nearly 20 joint operations against Daesh in Nangarhar over the past month.

"We use airpower of our own and of international forces, which is crucial in defeating Daesh," said Nangarhar police chief Fazel Ahmad Sherzad.

No single Daesh leader

Established mainly in Nangarhar, a province which borders the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan, Daesh has raised its profile in Afghanistan over the past year.

General John Campbell, the American commander of international forces in Afghanistan, said in December that the movement was believed to command no more than 1,000-3,000 fighters in the country.

Shoffner added: "What we don't see is Daesh in Iraq or Syria having the ability to control operations here in Afghanistan. We also don't see any one Daesh leader in Afghanistan able to control operations in more than one part of the country at a time."

But he said it had the potential to become a more serious threat if left unchecked.

Combining radical ideology with gruesome tactics including beheadings and at least one instance in which prisoners were killed by being blown up with explosives, it has established a reputation for extreme ferocity and attracted former members of the Afghan Taliban.

Over the past year it has grown in strength, challenging its larger rival for control of lucrative smuggling routes as well as dominance of the insurgency.

That has complicated the search for peace in Afghanistan by fragmenting forces who are fighting the Western-backed government, which, along with the United States, wants to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table.

One senior Western official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the potential for Daesh to radicalise young people who have known nothing but war was a much greater threat than the absolute size of its forces.

The raid on the radio station appears to have been aimed at eliminating an increasingly influential propaganda tool, which had targeted growing ranks of unemployed young men in the region.

Shoffner said that despite its efforts at propaganda and recruitment, there were doubts about whether Daesh would succeed in communicating its radical message to the traditional tribal culture of Afghanistan.

But he added: "We want to see Daesh contained and not become any more powerful than they currently are."

GENEVA — The World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Tuesday it had created a global unit to respond to the Zika virus, voicing fears the disease blamed for a surge in birth defects in South America could spread across Africa and Asia. 

"We have now set up a global response unit, which brings together all people across WHO in headquarters, in the regions, to deal with the formal response to Zika,” said WHO expert Anthony Costello.

The UN health body had said on Monday that a surge in cases in South America of microcephaly — a devastating condition in which a baby is born with an abnormally small head and brain — was likely caused by the mosquito-borne Zika virus, and declared the situation a "public health emergency of international concern".

The WHO is under pressure to move swiftly to tackle Zika, after admitting it was slow to respond to the recent Ebola outbreak that ravaged parts of west Africa.

Costello, a paediatrician and an expert on microcephaly, told reporters in Geneva that the WHO's new response unit would aim to use "all the lessons we've learned from the Ebola crisis" to help quickly address Zika, and the birth defects and neurological conditions it is believed to cause.

He emphasised the urgency of rapid action, stressing there was no reason to believe the crisis would remain limited to South America, where 25 countries so far have reported Zika cases.

"We are worried that this could also spread back into other areas of the world where the population may not be immune, and we know that the mosquitos that carry Zika virus are present through most of Africa, parts of southern Europe and many parts of Asia, particularly south Asia," he said.

Cape Verde hit 

Underlining his point, Thai officials announced on Tuesday that a man had contracted the virus in the country.

Cape Verde, which lies off the coast of west Africa, has also already reported domestic Zika cases.

Jitters over the virus have spread far beyond the affected areas to Europe and North America, where dozens of cases have been identified among travellers returning from Latin America.

Zika is transmitted by the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which also spreads dengue fever, and was first discovered in Uganda in 1947.

"Given that there is a vector, and given that we are in a global world, and presumably it crossed the Atlantic at some stage to get into Latin America, there is no reason particularly to think it couldn't travel in the opposite direction," Costello said.

BEIJING — China on Monday inaugurated the military's five new "battle zones", the defence ministry said, the latest step in President Xi Jinping's efforts to reform the country's armed forces.

Xi's push to reform the military coincides with China becoming more assertive in its territorial disputes in the East and South China Seas, and as its navy invests in submarines and aircraft carriers and its air force develops stealth fighters.

The reforms include establishing a joint operational command structure by 2020 and rejigging existing military regions, as well as cutting troop numbers by 300,000, a surprise announcement he made in September.

Late last year, Xi, the ruling Communist Party chief and also chairman of the Central Military Commission which runs the military, inaugurated a general command unit for the People's Liberation Army (PLA), a missile force and a strategic support force.

Weeks later, he split the PLA's four military headquarters into 15 new units — covering everything from logistics to equipment development, political work and fighting corruption.

Monday's move, which had been flagged in advance by state media, reclassified seven military regions into five — the East, West, South, North and Middle battle zones.

They will constitute what the defence ministry said in an online statement was each zone's "highest-level joint combat command structure".

Xi said the new zones shoulder the responsibility of responding to their respective "security threats, upholding peace and constraining conflict".

"All battle zones must unwaveringly listen to the Party's direction, insist upon the Party's absolute leadership," Xi said. State media showed Xi handing flags to the zone's new commanders.

Defence Ministry spokesman Yang Yujun said in a separate statement posted online that China would maintain its "defensive national defence policy" and that the country's development and foreign policy would be unchanged.

China has been moving rapidly to upgrade its military hardware, but integration of complex systems across a regionalised command structure has been a major challenge.

The troop cuts and broader reforms have proven controversial, though, and the military's newspaper has published a series of commentaries warning of opposition to the reforms and concern about job losses.

Xi has also made rooting out deeply entrenched corruption in the military a top priority. 

KABUL — A Taliban suicide bomber blew himself after joining a queue to enter a police office in Kabul on Monday, killing 20 people and wounding at least 29 in the worst attack this year.

The Afghan capital was hit by a series of suicide attacks last month as the Taliban stepped up their campaign against the Western-backed government. They coincided with renewed efforts to revive a peace process with the insurgent movement that stalled last year.

The interior ministry said in a statement that 20 people had been killed and 29 others wounded in the bombing.

In a separate statement, the NATO mission condemned the attack, which it said killed 20 police officers and wounded 25 others as well as seven Afghan civilians.

"Once again, terrorists have targeted a populated area with no regard for innocent lives," said Brig. Gen. Wilson Shoffner, Resolute Support deputy chief of staff for communications.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement that said 40 police officers had been killed or wounded. The group often makes exaggerated casualty claims for its attacks.

Ambulances and police vehicles rushed to the explosion site in the crowded Dehmazang district west of the city, near the Kabul traffic directorate, which is visited by those seeking driving licences and other documents.

"I saw three bodies on the ground and a number of other people wounded, then ambulances arrived and took all the victims away," witness Mohammad Ajmal said.

Last August, a Taliban suicide bomber killed dozens of students at a police academy in Kabul, using a similar tactic by joining a queue waiting to enter the compound.

The Afghan National Civil Order Police was set up as a gendarmerie-style unit to control riots and urban disorder but have also been used in counterinsurgency roles against the Taliban.

OSLO — Former US spy agency contractor Edward Snowden, peace negotiators in Colombia or Greek islanders helping Syrian refugees were among tips for the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize at the deadline for nominations on Monday.

Nobel watchers also speculated that negotiators of an accord over Iran's nuclear programme could be in the running after a surprise award last year to a coalition of Tunisian democracy campaigners, the National Dialogue Quartet.

"2016 may finally be Edward Snowden's year.  His leaks are now having a positive effect," Kristian Berg Harpviken, head of the Peace Research Institute, Oslo, told Reuters, putting him top of his list of candidates.

Harpviken said many nations were now reforming laws to restrict intelligence gathering, helping human rights, in the wake of Snowden's leaks in 2013 of details of the US government's surveillance programmes.

Washington has filed espionage charges against Snowden, who has been granted asylum in Russia. An award of the $930,000 prize to Snowden, by a Nobel committee in NATO member Norway, would be a huge snub for President Barack Obama, the 2009 Nobel laureate.

Asle Sveen, an historian and expert on the prize, said he reckoned the "obvious choice" for 2016 would be to honour Colombia's government and FARC rebel group — if they succeed in peace talks launched in 2012 to end five decades of war.

He noted Norway's government had been involved in organising peace talks, perhaps swaying the five-member Norwegian Nobel committee which is appointed by parliament. February 1 is the annual deadline for nominations.

Harpviken placed Colombian peace negotiators third on his list, behind US Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz and Ali Akbar Salehi, head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation, for their role in negotiating a deal last year to limit Iran's nuclear programme.

That accord led to a lifting of sanctions by major powers on Tehran last month.

Other candidates include Greek islanders who have helped Syrian and other refugees — a campaign by grassroots group Avaaz has collected 635,000 online signatures for a prize to islanders who "have opened their homes and hearts".

But it could be difficult to identify Greek winners under the plans set out by Alfred Nobel, the Swedish founder of the prize. The award can be split up to three ways, to individuals or organisations.

Sveen said other candidates may include Russian human rights groups such as Memorial, nominated by Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg before she took office in 2013.

"Huge numbers of nominations are still coming in," said Olav Njoelstad, director of the Norwegian Nobel Institute. The committee will have its first meeting on February 29 and announce the winner in October.

Thousands of people, including members of all national parliaments, former laureates and university rectors, can make nominations. Last year there were 273 nominees.

Harpviken said a US nominator, whom he did not identify, had proposed US Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump for his "vigorous peace through strength ideology". He did not list Trump among those with a chance of winning.

ZIKA, Uganda — Down winding paths through dense jungles, Gerald Mukisa kicks up the dry leaves noisily with his feet to provide warning sounds, noting that the late afternoon heat is "snake time".

The forest is calm. Only the sound of insects, birdsong and the rustle of monkeys in the jungle canopy above disturb the air.

It was here in the thick woodland of Zika forest, some 25 kilometres from Uganda's capital Kampala, that the mosquito-borne Zika virus was first discovered in 1947.

The virus, linked to a surge in birth defects, is "spreading explosively", World Health Organisation chief Margaret Chan said this week. An emergency meeting on the outbreak is due on February 1.

Mukisa, who has worked to guard the forest for the past seven years, only found out about the virus that takes its name two weeks ago.

"A few people who live nearby the forest and have heard about it are getting worried," he said. "Many others don't know about it."

Days ago, the tropical Zika forest was a little-known reserve visited only by bird watchers and scientists.

"Students come every week, coming from all over the world," said Mukisa, 50, proudly showing off a guest book with signatures and comments from the US, Canada, France and Germany, among other countries. "There are so many types of trees, and all sorts of birds."

No outbreak in Uganda 

Most local cases of the virus were mild, resulting in rash, fever, and red eyes in a small fraction of cases. Global health authorities barely took notice until an outbreak on the Micronesian island of Yap in 2007.

An outbreak that began last year in Brazil has been blamed for a surge in birth defects with thousands of babies born with small heads, an incurable and sometimes fatal condition known as microcephaly.

Uganda's health ministry is keen to point out it has no known cases of the virus, and that the current Americas' outbreak did not originate in East Africa.

"We have not recorded a case in Uganda in several years and we don't have such an outbreak," the ministry said in a statement.

"As a country, our disease and epidemic response systems are strong as evidenced in the way we have handled past viral haemorrhagic fever outbreaks."

Uganda has suffered outbreaks of Ebola in the past, as well as a mysterious illness known as "nodding disease".

Today the forest, close to the main highway from Uganda's international airport at Entebbe to the nearby capital Kampala, remains a research site for the Uganda Virus Research Institue (UVRI), an environmental health and protection agency founded in 1936, which is headquarted some 15 kilometres away.

"Warning! Uganda Virus Research Institute Land. Don't Trespass", reads one metal sign amid the thick vegetation, the red paint peeling in the sun.

Ruth Mirembe, 24, who lives beside the forest, learnt about the virus on Facebook. "I'm not worried," she said.

Virus changes over time

Also spelt Ziika, the 12-hectare site with over 60 different types of mosquito, means "overgrown" in the local language, Luganda.

UVRI notes proudly the "most prominent visitor" to Zika was the former US President Jimmy Carter "who came on a bird watching tour".

The details of the virus' discovery, written up in a 1952 paper by Britain's Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, described the "forested area called Zika", where scientists were researching yellow fever among small rhesus macaque monkeys.

"This area of forest consists of a narrow, dense belt of high but broken canopy growth with clumps of large trees," the 1952 paper read. 

"It lies along the edge of a long arm of Lake Victoria from which it is separated by a papyrus swamp."

Top UVRI scientist Julius Lutwama, 56, described how caged monkeys had been placed at different heights, with a 36 metre steel tower allowing researchers to carry out studies in the canopy of the thick trees.

"Blood samples would be taken from these monkeys to try to diagnose yellow fever, but actually that is how this disease was found," he said.

There is no vaccine against Zika, which top US health authorities described on Thursday as a "brand new" virus that has expanded swiftly in recent years and been linked to brain damage in babies. 

"What has happened in South America is that it has changed a little bit... and through these changes it has become more aggressive towards humans," Lutwama said. "This small change has resulted in it posing deep problems in the human population."

But Lutwama, like Uganda's health ministry, said he is not concerned and it poses little threat to Uganda, where people have always lived with it.

"Zika virus has always been a mild infection. Out of say five or 10 people who are infected, only one or two may actually show some fever that is noticeable," Lutwama added.

"Probably the other thing for us is that we have so many other viruses in the same group, so they confer some kind of immunity towards each other."

The Hague — Over 10,000 unaccompanied migrant children have disappeared in Europe, the EU police agency Europol said on Sunday, fearing many have been whisked into sex trafficking rings or the slave trade. 

Europol's press office confirmed to AFP the figures published in British newspaper The Observer, adding that they covered the last 18-24 months. 

The agency's chief of staff Brian Donald said the vulnerable children had disappeared from the system after registering with state authorities following their arrival in Europe.

"It's not unreasonable to say that we're looking at 10,000-plus children," Donald said, adding that 5,000 had disappeared in Italy alone.

"Not all of them will be criminally exploited; some might have been passed on to family members. We just don't know where they are, what they're doing or whom they are with."

Donald said there was evidence of a "criminal infrastructure" established over the last 18 months to exploit the migrant flow.

The Observer reported that Europol found evidence of links between smuggling rings bringing people into the EU and human trafficking gangs exploiting migrants for sex and slavery.

"There are prisons in Germany and Hungary where the vast majority of people arrested and placed there are in relation to criminal activity surrounding the migrant crisis," Donald said.

Over one million migrants and refugees, many fleeing the Syria conflict, crossed into Europe last year. 

"Whether they are registered or not, we're talking about 270,000 children," Donald told the paper.

"Not all of those are unaccompanied, but we also have evidence that a large proportion might be," he said, adding that the 10,000 is likely to be a conservative estimate.

He said many of the children are "visible", and not "spirited away and held in the middle of forests".

'Most vulnerable group' 

Raffaela Milano, Save the Children's Italy-Europe programme director, said that "unaccompanied minors who travel without adults are the most vulnerable group of the migratory flow". 

"Many minors, in fact, make themselves 'invisible' to the authorities to enable them to continue their journey in Europe, for fear of being sent back," she said.

Many children arrive first on the Greek islands before making the journey to relatives across Europe. 

Laura Pappa, president of the Greek charity Meta-Action, a group accompanying children who travel without relatives, said they "face a destiny that is worse than that of the rest of migrants waiting to be relocated".

She said they often have to wait for around seven months to be reunited with relatives, and that procedures can be slow and complicated.

"There are some people that present themselves as uncles and take the children. It's not easy in this mess to cross check the identity of the 'uncle'." 

Pappa said the group has helped 3,000 children reach family, but that it "is not enough". 

Escalating tensions 

Britain is one country that has said it will take in migrant or refugee children who have been separated from their parents.

Despite the constant risk of death and deportation, migrants continue to stream into Europe, risking their lives to escape poverty, repression and conflict.

Many children are among the refugees and migrants who have lost their lives making the perilous crossing in the Mediterranean.

In the latest tragedy, the Turkish coastguard recovered the bodies of women and children were washed up on a beach after their boat sank, leaving at least 37 people dead.

Tensions are escalating across the continent over the increasing numbers of migrants, with many right-wing groups calling for more immigration restrictions and tighter borders.

On Saturday, Swedish police said dozens of masked men believed to belong to neo-Nazi gangs gathered in Stockholm and handed out leaflets calling for attacks against young unaccompanied migrants.

And anti-fascist and far-right protesters clashed in a southern German town where unknown assailants threw a hand grenade into a refugee shelter on Friday, as the country scrambles to integrate the over one million asylum seekers it welcomed last year.