Christian and Muslim refugees should be housed separately to prevent the escalation of religious violence, one of Germany’s leading policeman has said. Jörg Radek, deputy head of Germany’s police union, told the German newspaper Die Welt that “I think housing separated according to religion makes perfect sense.” On Sunday there were two separate fights between refugees at a temporary migrant shelter in Kassel-Calden in northern Germany, which left 14 people injured. The second involved almost 400 people. Earlier on Thursday a fight broke out between 200 Syrians and Afghans at a shelter in Leipzig. Germany expects to receive 800,000 asylum applications this year, only of a quarter of which are from Syria. “The police have reached their absolute breaking point,” said Mr Radek. “Our officials are increasingly being called to confrontations in refugee homes. When there are 4,000 people in a home which only actually has places for 750, this confinement then leads to aggression where even a tiny thing like the corridor to the toilet can lead to violence.” Thuringia has become the first German state to accommodate refugees separately by country of origin, after violence in the city of Sulh in August. About 10 per cent of Syria’s pre-war population was Christian, but it is not known what proportion of those who have crossed into Europe are. Syrian Christians tend to avoid the refugee camps from which Britain is to take refugees, which has led religious figures in Britain to warn that it is discriminating against Christians.