'DON'T COME HERE!' Merkel migrant U-turn as Germany orders EU to SEND BACK boats to Africa

ANGELA Merkel today performed an extraordinary U-turn on mass migration as Germany ordered the EU to begin turning back boats full of asylum seekers crossing the Mediterranean.

Her interior ministry said Brussels should send out patrols to intercept smugglers' vessels and escort them back to north Africa, marking a massive shift in Germany's official migration policy.

At the moment the EU and member states operate search and rescue operations to save refugees crossing the Mediterranean in often unseaworthy ships, who are then brought to the European mainland to claim asylum.

But now Germany, which has taken in well over a million migrants in the last year, has said that policy should scrapped because it is simply encouraging more people to make the perilous journey.

More than 4,000 asylum seekers are believed to have drowned at sea this year alone, more than the 3,771 deaths reported for the whole of 2015.

The spike has been caused in part by more and more migrants attempting the risky sea crossing from Libya to Italy after the safer passage between Turkey and Greece was shut off by an EU deal.

On top of that, beleaguered Mrs Merkel has come under huge political pressure over her enormously unpopular open door asylum policy, which has seen a number of humiliating electoral defeats inflicted on her party in regional elections.

There has been talk in political circles of her one-time allies ousting her as leader of the country unless she agrees to significantly harden her stance on refugees and win back the confidence of voters.

And today she appeared to respond

read full article at source: http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/729402/Migrant-crisis-Angela-Merkel-refugee-Germany-tougher-asylum-smugglers-Mediterranean