People traffickers in Med escape French fire-power
By Adrian Lancashire | With TF1



PARIS: -- On the lookout for trouble, the French navy frigate Courbet is plying the Mediterranean with a crew of almost 200 on board, with a helicopter ready for action. Disrupting people smuggling operations is their business, and saving lives.

At four in the morning, marines in swift dingies set out in search of suspicious vessels.

After sunrise, the helicopter takes a closer look at a wooden-hilled boat of migrants that seems to have come from Libya. The engine is still running but the traffickers have taken flight and are nowhere to be found.

The Italian navy will care for the migrants. According to the Courbet’s men, their boat could have never reached the Italian coast.

Wearing simple hazmat suits, the French pick through the rubbish left behind.

“We might look for mobile phones or notebooks people might have written stuff down in. We also keep an eye open for medicines, to know what illnesses there could have been in this boat.”

The refugee boat is sunk with explosives.

Following the principle that the best defence can be a good offence, live rounds are fired off. This exercise is to keep bandits at a distance.

“There is a risk that terrorists could try to ram us with a launch stuffed with explosives, or fire off a rocket close up.”

In 2008, the Courbet took part in anti-piracy operations off the horn of Africa.

Now with the European Union Naval Force, its sites are set on neutralising refugee traffickers in the Mediterranean.


-- (c) Copyright Euronews 2015-12-02

^{"The engine is still running but the traffickers have taken flight and are nowhere to be found."}

^{Whenever I read something like this, I'm always curious as to how the traffickers get away. Do they travel with two boats or do they have some kind of high-speed inflatable that they use?}

^{Looking at the picture it would appear that the French are operating within Libyan waters as this boat seems to have been found very close to the coast.}

That is exactly what is happening. They got a small dinghy way faster than the military naval vessels and they will be armed with assault rifles.

There was one incident where they forced a less heavily armed Italian coast guard to back off and leave them the trawler they had just taken the

"refugees" off for likely re-use. Next case was when some criminals on board a trawler simply told a German frigate, they were Libyan coast guard,

and as that could not be ascertained and nobody knows, what's what in Libya they were forced to let them go to not provoke an international incident.

It's total jungle out there, a state of total lawlessness and everybody is dragging their feet about solving the situation.