A 13-year-old boy from Syria has been found alone and wandering around Tilburg railway station, local NS workers said on Facebook on Monday.

The boy, who only spoke Arabic, began to cry when he reached the NS officials, the Facebook message said.

‘He seemed to be frightened so we tried to comfort him,’ they said. A passerby was able to speak to the child in Arabic and told the officials he was 13 and had come to the Netherlands from Syria by himself. He had documents with personal information among his possessions.

The boy was handed over to the police who will now take him to the immigration authorities to start an asylum procedure.

At the beginning of August Utrecht police found an 11-year-old Syrian girl alone in the city’s main railway station.