EXCLUSIVE - The lawless asylum centre where migrants rule: Inside squalid Swedish shelter that police will not enter, where 10-year-old boy was raped and that has just TWO staff on duty for 600 refugees

MailOnline reveals rooms 'so overcrowded that youths were free to rape'

Migrants claim six people are crammed in on mattresses and bunk beds

Ten-year-old was sexually abused at Signalisten Asylum Centre in Sweden

Police were then chased from the corridors after being surrounded by mob

Officers now refuse to enter and just two staff guard 600 migrants at night

Activists ten children have been raped because of overcrowding

Sweden struggling to cope with 160,000 new arrivals

The tiny room is crammed full of all the family's worldly possessions. Dirty dishes, baby bottles and an old kettle fight for space with a glowing tablet computer, in a room eight metres square that is now home to six people.

Amid the squalor, a sick child lies sleeping on an old mattress on the floor, inches from a filthy sink that doubles as bathroom and kitchen.

These are the conditions inside one of Sweden's most notorious asylum centres - where youths were free to rape a ten-year-old boy and where police now refuse to enter after being chased away in a riot.

Signalisten Asylum Centre in Västerås, an hour west of Stockholm, was once a hotel welcoming people to the town of 133,000 people.

Today, 600 men, women and children sleep in its grubby rooms, guarded by just two night-time staff who are too scared to leave their rooms.

As MailOnline gained exclusive access to the centre, campaigners claimed that overcrowding in Sweden's asylum centres is so severe that as many as ten children have been raped.

Afghan Association chairman Hussein Asgari insists that children are at increasing risk because of Sweden's failure to get to grips with the influx of migrants each month.

He blames overcrowding after the Migration Board in Sweden changed the rules about how much space every person must have at asylum centres, from 5 square meters to 3 square metres.

'I have gotten several phone calls - up to 10 - from children who say that they have been raped since they got to Sweden,' Hussein told MailOnline.

'This happens because the asylum centres are overcrowded. There is no supervision from the staff or the Migration Board. If you have one or two criminals or in this case rapists among 600 immigrants, they can run wild with no one noticing.

'In some cases there are children staying at families where the father is molesting the boys. In other cases there are children who has been abused by older men at asylum centres.

'I have told every child who has reported these kind of abuses to contact the police. But they won´t do it because they are ashamed about what has happened to them.'

Instead, Hussein says it has been up to him to try to raise the alarm. 'Someone needs to react. We have to lift this problem. There are a very few very bad men coming to Sweden, but they destroy other migrants lives.'

Authorities admit that the centres are overcrowded and uncontrollable - leaving residents and Swedes living nearby in danger.

According to the Swedish Migration Agency, the number of threats and violent incidents at asylum facilities more than doubled from 2014 to 2015 as Sweden witnessed a record number of migrant arrivals.

In 2014, there were 148 incidents and in 2015 that number jumped to 322

Police were forced to visit the centre at Västerås 'at least a couple of times a week', one officer revealed to MailOnline, on condition of anonymity.

'It can be drugs, people who are fighting or that the staff simply feels unsafe'.

This is repeated across Sweden: more than 5,000 incidents involving migrants were filed last year, and police say callouts to the centres doubled on the year before.

Then, ten days ago, police were called to investigate the rape of a ten-year-old boy who had been attacked by older youths.

The boy and his family were removed to a safer environment by the Social Services but tensions at the centre escalated.

Just days later, the Swedish Migration Board decided that a second family should be removed from the centre for their safety, and the situation became highly dangerous.

Initially, staff in the centre tried to remove the family but were stopped by crowds of migrants who wanted to prevent the boy's father, a doctor who treated sick children, from leaving.

They called police for backup but even officers could not overcome the mob.

The police incident report stated: 'Even more people appeared behind us. I was mentally prepared to fight for my life. We were 10 police officers in a narrow corridor. And I hear someone yell that there is an emergency exit and we start running towards it.'

MailOnline has learned that the migrants fought back against the police because they claim they are not getting any medical help.

Centre resident Mahmeed said: 'The father in the family was a very popular figure at our centre. He was a doctor in Syria and helped people who were sick especially the children.'

'The ones who are running this centre do not bring a doctor or help sick children to get to the hospital. He was the only one who could help us.

When the police entered the building everyone got really angry and they were pushed into a corridor. They had also brought a dog. What police brings a dog when they are going to pick up a family with kids?'

Now police are refusing to enter. Officers have been told to go in to the cramped corridors only if absolutely necessary.

Just two staff are on duty each night - and no security guard. The halls are monitored by CCTV, but staff are too scared to leave the safety of their office should a fight break out, one employee reveals to MailOnline.

Migrants say the centre is utterly lawless.

'This must be the worst asylum centre in Sweden,' said Mahmeed, a refugee from Aleppo who stands huddled in the doorway, smoking cigarettes with his friends.

'Things like that are not suppose to happen anywhere, but it is a totally different world inside the centre: anything could happen.

'The staff are too few and do not have any idea what is going on.

'The management threaten to send us to an even worse camp up in the cold and wintery north if we [say anything],' says Mahmeed.

He is sharing one of the small rooms with his wife and four children, with no hope of leaving any time soon. But it could be far worse.

'The conditions inside are very poor,' he said. 'At least six people are staying in bunk beds in every room and in most rooms people have to sleep on mattresses.'

Inside one of the overcrowded rooms, Ahmed Naktal sits with his four-year-old son Hassem.

The rest of the family, who fled Mosul as ISIS approached, are in the dining hall eating, but Ahmed offered to stay behind with Hassem, who has a fever.

'No one helping sick children here,' he told MailOnline. 'The staff does not have time to go with us to the hospital.

'That is why Hassem needs to stay in his room, if he goes out then every other child also gets fever.

'This whole building is so packed with people so there is no space apart from this room to keep our child.'

The Swedish Migration Board refused to comment about rapes at asylum homes. The Swedish Police say they do not collect statistics on rape allegations at asylum or migration centres.

Read more: The lawless asylum centre where migrants rule in Sweden