Thirteen asylum seekers committed suicide in Dutch refugee centres in the first six months of last year and there were 80 attempted suicides, the Volkskrant said on Friday. A further four people set themselves on fire.

In total, officials recorded 2,741 ‘incidents’, the paper says. It obtained the figures from the refugee settlement agency COA using freedom of information legislation.

The COA is required by law to monitor incidents at refugee centres following the suicide of Russian asylum seeker Aleksandr Dolmatov who was wrongly told he was being deported.

The official list of incidents ranges from violent crime to failing to keep living quarters clean. This first report also includes 124 cases of threats and intimidation, 47 physical attacks and 461 cases of ‘unacceptable behaviour’. In total 58 refugees went missing and 23 went on hunger strike.

A spokesman for refugee aid group Vluchtelingenwerk Nederland told the paper it is not surprising there are so many incidents, given the situation refugees find themselves in.

‘We are talking about people who often have traumas and are worried about the asylum procedure,’ he said.