Foreign and defense ministers from the European Union are to gather on Monday to endorse plans for an ambitious naval force to fight people smugglers in the Mediterranean. The plans come after a series of shipwrecks that killed hundreds of migrants making the perilous voyage from North Africa. The U.N. estimates that around 60,000 migrants have already attempted to get across the Mediterranean Sea to Europe this year. Over 1,800 people are feared to have died in the crossing in overcrowded and unsafe boats since the beginning of 2015 – a 20-fold increase over the same period in 2014, according to the BBC. On Sunday, a Libyan official told the BBC that ISIS militants are being smuggled into Europe across the Mediterranean by smugglers. Libyan government official Abdul Basit Haroun said that smugglers were hiding ISIS militants aboard their vessels crammed with migrants. He claimed this information was from conversations he had with boat owners in parts of North Africa which are controlled by the militants. He added that ISIS was allowing the smugglers to continue their operations in exchange for a 50 percent share of their revenue. In early 2015, the EU's border control agency had warned that it was "possible" for foreign fighters to be using illegal migration in the Mediterranean to get into Europe.
