| 1 | A police officer tries to hold migrants behind a fence as they wait to register on the Greek island of Kos. |
| 2 | A police officer tries to hold migrants behind a fence as they wait... |
| 3 | KOS, Greece - 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. |
| 4 | Tens of thousands of people, many of them fleeing conflict in Syria and Afghanistan, have been making their way from the Turkish coast to nearby Greek islands in inflatable dinghies, overwhelming cash-strapped and understaffed authorities on the islands. |
| 5 | The vast majority then head to mainland Greece and from there, try to reach more prosperous European Union countries either by walking across the Balkans from northern Greece, or sneaking onto Italy-bound ferries. |
| 6 | The 1,417 migrants were picked up at sea in 59 incidents off the coasts of the islands of Lesbos, Chios, Samos, Agathonisi and Kos, the coast guard said. |
| 7 | Those figures do not include the hundreds of others who manage to reach the islands' coasts themselves, walking to the main towns to turn themselves in to local authorities and receive registration papers. |
| 8 | The increasing pace of arrivals comes on top of the roughly 124,000 migrants who reached the Greek islands by boat in the first seven months of 2015, a 750 percent increase from the same period last year, according to UNHCR, the United Nations' refugee agency. |
| 9 | In July alone, there were 50,000 arrivals, about 70 percent from Syria. |
| 10 | In all, 156,726 migrants had been arrested for entering or remaining in the country illegally from January through July this year, compared to 32,070 for the same period last year, police said Monday. |
| 11 | The numbers have overwhelmed police and coast guard officials on the islands, where authorities are unable to keep up with the new arrivals and process them fast enough, leaving many living on the streets or in precarious temporary shelters. |
| 12 | Tension has often escalated on several of the islands, with fights breaking out among groups of migrants, or between migrants demanding faster processing and coast guard or police officers. |
| 13 | On Monday, a policeman holding a knife roughly pushed back migrants crowding outside a municipal building in Kos, slapping one man across the face as he shoved others, telling them to get back behind a line he drew on the pavement with the knife. |
| 14 | The policeman was suspended. |
| 15 | Greece, in the throes of its worst financial crisis, is straining to accommodate the inflow. |
| 16 | Hundreds are camping out in a public park in Athens. |
| 17 | The leftist government is building a reception center in Athens where it says migrants will be free to come and go as they please. |