ATHENS: Greek police used fire extinguishers and batons against migrants on the island of Kos, as tensions boiled over in a sports stadium where hundreds, including young children, had gathered to wait for immigration papers, state television footage showed.

The scuffles took place a day after a police officer on the island was suspended for brandishing a knife and slapping a man identified by Greek media as a Pakistani migrant.

On Tuesday, TV images showed hundreds of migrants jostling with one another as they ran from huge clouds of thick white powder set off from fire extinguishers wielded by police officers who were apparently trying to disperse the crowd.

It was not immediately clear what had sparked the violence.

Greece has seen a surge in the number of migrants and refugees, fleeing war zones like Syria, trying to enter the European Union by crossing in rubber dinghies from Turkey. The United Nations refugee agency UNHCR said 124,000 had landed on Greek islands this year.

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

Kos Mayor Yorgos Kyritsis said strained local services, including the police and coast guard were unable to cope with the influx.

“This situation on the island is out of control,” he told Greek TV. “There is a real danger of uncontrollable situations. Blood will be shed.”

A Greek police official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said riot police squads would be deployed to the island and police officers from the neighboring islands of Rhodes and Syros would be sent in as reinforcements.

Meanwhile, Italy has arrested nearly 900 suspected people traffickers since January 2014 but the kingpins remain at large, police data published Tuesday in Catholic daily Avvenire showed.

Eight hundred of them are merely “men with few scruples, placed at the helm of the boat with a satellite phone and a bat to keep migrants in line,” while around 80 others are suspected of having played a bigger role in operations.

Of the 888 arrested, the majority are from Egypt and Tunisia. During this period, some 270,000 migrants arrived in Italy by sea.

However, despite increased police cooperation between Italy and the counties concerned — with the exception of war-torn Libya — none of the internationally sought after masterminds have been arrested.

Avvenire highlighted the case of Ethiopian Ermias Gharmiay, suspected of having accumulated as much as $70 million (63.5 million euros) from chartering boats to smuggle people into Europe, including the vessel which capsized in 2013 off the coast of Lampedusa in Italy, leaving 366 dead.