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The Greek police is carrying out a contingency plan on the island of Kos in an attempt to contain the crisis caused by the prolonged stay of thousands of Syrian refugees and illegal immigrants on the island.

The Chief of the Hellenic Police, Dimitrios Tsaknakis, has seconded to Kos 12 staff members from Attica led by Zacharoula Tsirigoti, head of the Foreign Citizens Department of the police. The aim of the mission is to speed up the process of identifying nearly 7,000 of the refugees and illegal immigrants who have been residing on the island for weeks waiting to be issued with a document confirming the termination (for one or six months) of prosecution against them (the so-called 'laissez passe').

A police source told Kathimerini that the extraordinary procedure had begun at 5 PM on Monday, went on throughout the night, and ended up having identified roughly 750 foreigners at 4 AM. The aim is to ship 1,500 refugees and illegal immigrants to Piraeus today by the regular boat lines, and have most of the 7,000 people transported by Friday.

Yesterday, however, the process was interrupted by scuffles between the immigrants and the police, with the latter using fire extinguishers to keep the enraged crowd at bay. Therefore, two squads of the public order service will be dislocated on Kos by military aircraft C-130 to make sure the process runs smoothly and there is no rekindling of the unrest.

Last night, police chief Tsaknakis sent 250 officers to the islands in the eastern Aegean as reinforcement. 110 of them will be allocated to police stations across the Dodecanese, while the remaining 140 will support current forces on Samos, Chios and Mytilene.