Fights break out in Kos as migrant numbers increase

Many said the authorities had been unable to provide them with water, shelter, food or sanitation.

Four police used truncheons and fire extinguishers seemingly to prevent a stampede as a crowd tried to squeeze through a door into the stadium, an Agence France-Presse photographer at the scene said. On Kos, local residents and hotel employees watched unfazed Sunday as a dozen Pakistani migrants punctured their life raft and gathered their belongings as soon as they landed, and asked for directions to the nearest migrant detention center. The European Union is granting 2.4 billion euros ($2.6 billion) to EU nations to upgrade their migration programs with the biggest sums going to Greece and Italy where thousands of refugees have arrived this year. But first they must stay in the camps for up to a week to obtain the registration needed to travel through Greece legally.

The escalation of trouble in Greece will fuel anxieties among the 90,000 British tourists holidaying on its islands. The United Nations refugee agency said 124,000 had arrived this year by sea.

Police data show that 888 suspected people traffickers have been arrested since January 2014. According to local authorities, at least 5,000 are now trapped on the island due to the registration backlog. “Today there is just one”.

A policeman on Kos was suspended on Monday after he was caught on camera striking a migrant.

Hundreds of protesting migrants demanding quick registration began blocking the main coastal road in the island’s main town, staging a sit-in.

They chanted “We want papers, we want to eat!”

Greece’s coast guard rescued more than 1,400 migrants near several Greek islands in the eastern Aegean Sea over the past three days as the pace of new arrivals increases, authorities said Monday.

But an attempt relocate hundreds of people to a stadium for registration on Tuesday degenerated into chaos, with scuffles breaking out in the long queues.

The UNHCR called conditions for migrants on Kos and other islands “shameful”.

The process of identifying the arrivals was brusquely interrupted Tuesday when a fracas broke out between migrants and police officers as the former were being transferred to the old soccer stadium. Earlier, a vehicle driver out here tried to run the crowd over.