Migrant crisis: UK to send ships to tackle people smugglers

The UK will provide "vital military assets" to help a Nato mission tackling people smugglers in the Aegean Sea, David Cameron has said.

The PM said the amphibious landing ship RFA Mounts Bay would be sent, ahead of an emergency EU summit in Brussels.

The ship, which carries a Wildcat helicopter, will be working alongside three UK Border Force boats.

More than a million migrants entered the EU illegally by boat travelling mainly from Turkey to Greece last year.

RFA Mounts Bay and two Border Force patrol boats, known as cutters, will join naval vessels from Germany, Canada,
Turkey and Greece as part of Nato's first intervention in the migrant crisis.

The vessels will identify smugglers taking migrants to Greece and pass the information to the Turkish coastguard so it can intercept the boats and take the migrants back to Turkey.

The EU has pledged €3bn (£2.3bn; $3.3bn) to Turkey in return for housing migrants and stemming the flow.

Some 13,000 are stranded on Greece's border with Macedonia as European states seek to restrict entry.

RFA Mounts Bay would begin the operation in the "coming days", the cutter Protector was on its way to the region and a further cutter was expected to join them later this month, the government said.

Another Border Force boat, VOS Grace, is already in the Aegean Sea, between Greece and Turkey.

Source: BBC