NATO orders warships into Aegean to ease migrant crisis

In a dramatic response to Europe’s gravest refugee crisis since World War II, NATO ordered three warships to sail immediately Thursday to the Aegean Sea to help end the deadly smuggling of asylumseekers across the waters from Turkey to Greece.

Even after the ships were told to get underway, NATO officials noted uncertainties about the precise actions they would be performing — including whether they would take part in operations to rescue drowning migrants. The arrival of more than a million people in Europe in 2015 — mostly Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans — plunged the 28-nation European Union into what some see as its most serious crisis ever. Winter weather has not stopped the onslaught of refugees crossing the Aegean. The International Organization for Migration said that 76,000 people — nearly 2,000 per day — have reached Europe by sea this year. Of the 409 who died, most drowned.