RCN helping track down human smugglers in Aegean

[The Bread Guy]

This from CBC.ca ...

NATO's European commander on Thursday ordered three warships — including Canada's HMCS Fredericton — to move immediately to the Aegean Sea to help end the deadly smuggling of migrants between Turkey and Greece.

Jens Stoltenberg, the NATO secretary-general, said the warships, now under German command, will conduct reconnaissance and surveillance to help end Europe's gravest migrant crisis since the Second World War.

Ships from NATO Standing Maritime Group 2 "will start to move now" on orders from U.S. Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove, NATO's supreme commander in Europe, Stoltenberg said.

"This is about helping Greece, Turkey and the European Union with stemming the flow of migrants and refugees and coping with a very demanding situation," Stoltenberg said, calling the situation a "human tragedy." ...

... with a bit more from German media:

German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen said on Thursday that NATO approved a mission in the Aegean Sea that seeks to impede migrants from entering the EU via Greece.

"It is important that we now act quickly," von der Leyen told reporters at NATO's headquarters in Brussels.

The request for NATO to consider launching such an operation was submitted by Germany, Greece and Turkey, as the EU struggles to form a comprehensive response to more than a million migrants entering the bloc in 2015, many fleeing war in the Middle East, Asia and Africa.

Under the plan, a NATO naval force will be sent to the Aegean to conduct reconnaissance missions and obtain strategic information on human traffickers in the area. The information will then be forwarded to Turkish and Greek authorities as well as the EU border protection agency Frontex, von der Leyen added.

Von der Leyen said the aim was to gain a "clear view" of how the people smugglers were operating along the Turkish coast. In cases of emergencies where migrants' lives were threatened, she said, NATO forces would save them and transfer them back to Turkey, with Ankara's consent ...