Nikolia Apostolou, Special for USA TODAY 7:15 p.m. EDT September 12, 2015

A man carries a girl in his arm as they arrive with other migrants just after dawn on a dinghy after crossing from Turkey to the island of Kos, Greece on Aug. 13, 2015. Greece has become the main gateway to Europe for tens of thousands of refugees and economic migrants, mainly Syrians fleeing war, as fighting in Libya has made the alternative route from north Africa to Italy increasingly dangerous.(Photo: Alexander Zemlianichenko, AP)

KOS, Greece — It was past 10 p.m. as an angry crowd of refugees gathered outside the police station on this tiny Greek island off the Turkish coast, chanting, “We want peace.” Five policemen wearing helmets stood before the crowd, one holding a canister of tear gas.

Many in the crowd had been waiting for more than a week to obtain a temporary permit to remain in the country, and they were upset that there is no refugee camp or other government assistance for them, so they have to sleep on the streets if they can't afford to pay for a hotel room or rent a tent. Some local residents who don't want them here have attacked them.

The refugees don't want to be here, either. They want to move on to Germany or another European country where they are welcome and cared for. Some worry about using up their life savings before they are allowed to leave Greece. Others are still grieving the loss of family members who died back home or while making the perilous sea crossing.

"The crossing from the sea was the most dangerous part of our journey," said Mahdi Khademi, 16, an Afghan refugee who had been traveling 15 days with an older brother to escape Taliban attacks in his hometown of Herat in western Afghanistan. "We were eight hours in the sea and the engine stopped working midway."

Afghan refugee Mahdi Khademi, 16, left, sits with his brother and relatives on Kos. They don't know how long the wait will be until they get the right documents to continue their journey to Germany. (Photo: Nikolia Apostolou)

Kos is on the frontlines of Europe's worst migrant crisis since World War II. Every morning, dozens of tiny boats land onshore filled with people from the Middle East and Africa who are fleeing war or seeking a better economic life. It's a scene that's been repeated daily for weeks here and on other Mediterranean islands that have become the most popular entry points to the continent.

On the night of the protest, members of Kos Solidarity, a volunteer group that aids the migrants, stood between the police and recent arrivals to calm things down. But around midnight, the riot police pushed the refugees away from the station while some local residents threw eggs at the volunteers.

Giorgos Chartofilis, a skinny physics teacher who belongs to Kos Solidarity, said his group alone gives out food to as many as 2,000 people. “There have been times that it was only three of us and we had a line of 1,000 people,” he said.

As Chartofilis and other volunteers handed out food, a local resident who draws tourists' portraits for a living yelled at them, “Yes, feed them so they'll have more strength to protest at night.”

The hostility reflects the strains that the huge influx of migrants is creating for Greece at a time when it is grappling with economic distress and financial sacrifices demanded by European creditors as the price for new loans needed to avert bankruptcy.

In 2014, 43,500 people arrived in Greece. Through mid-August this year, more than 160,000 had landed on Greek shores,or nearly two-thirds of the 250,000 migrants who have crossed into Europe so far this year, according to the International Organization for Migration. Around 2,300 died trying to make the perilous journey here, the Swiss-based group said.

Migrant families sleep on the sea front in tents on Aug. 31, 2015, in Kos, Greece. (Photo: Dan Kitwood, Getty Images)

Greece's government has said it can’t provide for the thousands of migrants that arrive daily. It has pleaded with the European Union for emergency support to deal with the influx, but that aid has yet to come.

In the meantime, as migrants sleep in the shadow of the Medieval-era Neratzai Castle, a major tourist destination here, hundreds of locals and visitors bring them water bottles, food, and toys, proof that not everyone on the island is anti-migrant.

On the beach in Kos, some migrants have rented tents for a fee of $16 a night. Others sleep on the sand.

Syrian refugee Abu Fidel, 27, happily showed his ferry ticket to the port of Piraeus near Athens. He received his six-month permit to stay in Greece and will continue his journey north with his cousins and nephews. He plans to pass through the Balkans, Hungary and Austria before reaching Germany, where the government promised this week to host 800,000 migrants.

Three months ago, Fidel's wife and his only child died when an air strike bombed their house in Aleppo, which has been the scene of mass destruction during Syria's long civil war. For 12 days, he waited in Kos for his papers. “There's nowhere to shower, nowhere to sleep,” he said as his cousin prepared to wash his clothes in the sea.

On his phone, he saved videos of migrant scuffles with the police. He showed a photo of himself on the ground after a police officer struck him. He was trying to remove a small child from the fight when the officer hit him with a baton. He still has a lump on his head.

As he scrolled through the pictures on his phone, he came to photos of his wife and son. He kissed the screen.

“We just wish that the war would stop, and we could go back to our country,” he said. "It's been so many years that it's been going on."

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