A team of British intelligence analysts and communications experts are joining EU efforts to help crackdown on gangs sending illegal migrants by sea to Europe, the Sunday Express reported.
The team “will form a network with European agencies to identify organized crime groups smuggling migrants to the Libyan coast, identify the routes and methods the smugglers use and better understand the money flows being used by traffickers so that they can be shut down,” the news website quoted a British government source as saying on Saturday.
The function of the team could also involve the interception and possible destruction of illegal migration vessels along Libyan coasts, which the report said should win EU approval in advance
According to the report, UK Foreign Minister Philip Hammond is scheduled to attend a meeting in Brussels on Monday “to discuss the next stage of the EU's response to the crisis, which has already seen 100,000 mainly African and Syrian migrants enter Europe since January.”
In its summit on illegal migration last month, the EU approved a common plan to dedicate a security force against smuggling activities in the Mediterranean.
