KOS // A giant passenger ferry reached the Greek island of Kos on Friday to provide temporary accommodation for crowds of Syrian refugees sleeping rough after crossing clandestinely from Turkey in flimsy boats.
It came as the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) said that the number of migrants and asylum-seekers who have crossed the Mediterranean to Europe this year will pass the quarter-million mark by the end of the month – more than half of them arriving in Greece.
The Eleftherios Venizelos ferry, which can take up to 2,500 people, will function from Saturday as a screening centre where Syrians can stay as they wait for temporary travel documents to leave the island. It will replace an old stadium criticised for its lack of basic amenities, where Greek authorities have screened and issued documents to about 7,000 Syrians since Monday.
Maj Gen Zacharoula Tsirigoti, head of the Greek police’s aliens and border protection branch, said that all of the Syrians who had arrived on Kos by late Thursday have now been screened. She said the ferry will stay on for about two weeks to cater to new arrivals, whose numbers are expected to drop off as weather conditions deteriorate in the autumn.
About 1,900 Syrians who had received their papers were expected to leave Kos on Friday via Athens-bound ferries, Maj Gen Tsirigoti said. Another 2,000 had left over the past two days, considerably reducing the overall number of people trapped on the island.
While scores of tents remain standing outside the stadium, the situation is much better than at the beginning of the week, when thousands of people were sleeping rough in parks, along the seafront promenade, in the harbour and under the walls of a coastal medieval fort.
The Greek coastguard said that it rescued nearly 600 refugees and migrants at sea between Thursday morning and Friday morning, in 21 separate incidents off Kos and the islands of Rhodes, Chios, Samothraki and Lesbos.
Financially struggling Greece has reported 134,988 arrivals from Turkey this year, the Geneva-based IOM said on Friday, while Italy recorded 93,540. In total, 237,000 people have made the crossing so far this year, also including arrivals to Spain and Malta, the group says. It is forecasting that the total will top 250,000 by the end of August.
Last year, a total of 219,000 made the risky crossing to Europe.
The IOM estimated that at least 2,300 people have died trying to make the crossing this year.
At least two rubber boats carrying men, women and children from Syria safely made the 4 kilometre-crossing from Turkey early on Friday. One landed on a swimming beach in the main town of Kos, where bathers watched as about 40 people in life vests came to shore among the umbrellas and lilos.
* Associated Press