NATO Sends Ships to Monitor the Aegean Sea

NATO will be sending ships to monitor the human trafficking issue in the Aegean Sea, the military alliance's secretary general announced Thursday.

"This is not about stopping or pushing back refugee boats," the general, Jens Stoltenberg, said reported by the New York Times.

NATO has been pressured mainly by Turkey and Germany to increase it surveillance of this region after hundreds of migrants have continued to die while trying to make the journey to Greece from Turkey.

Supreme Allied Commander Gen. Philip Breedlove stated during a news conference that he was working on a mission plan while "sailing the ships in the appropriate direction."

Although the details of the mission have not been revealed, the ships will presumably be working with the Greek and Turkish coast guards as well as Fronex, the European Union border agency in monitoring illegal boats carrying large amounts of migrants. It is unclear what the protocol is when a ship finds boats that are smuggling migrants.

"This mission has literally come together in the last 20 hours, and I have been tasked now to go back and define the mission," Breedlove said. "We had some very rapid decision making and now we have to go out to do some military work."

Breedlove added that NATO will also be closely watching migrant movement at the Syria-Turkey border. The ships that have been deployed are from Canada, Greece, Germany and Turkey. A German official stated that Denmark and the Netherlands could send one ship each as well.

The United States stated that the mission has its full support.

"It is important that we now act quickly," German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen said reported by Reuters.

The International Organization of Migration (IOM) reported that so far, about 409 people have died while trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea to get to the EU. The death tool for 2015 was around 3,800.