BRUSSELS -- European Union leaders on Thursday committed extra ships, planes and helicopters to save lives in the Mediterranean and agreed to lay the groundwork for military action against human traffickers at an emergency summit to address a crisis that is estimated to have left more than 1,300 people dead over the past three weeks.
Germany and France pledged two ships each, while Britain committed three to patrol the Mediterranean. Other member states also lined up more vessels and helicopters that could be used to rescue people who are trying to cross the sea to reach Europe, officials said.
"Leaders have already pledged significantly greater support, including many more vessels, aircraft and experts" than had been expected before the summit, EU President Donald Tusk said Thursday.
EU member states agreed to triple funding to $9.7 million a month for operation Triton, the EU operation that patrols the Mediterranean.
Thousands of people fleeing conflicts or poverty in the Middle East and Africa head to Italy each year on smugglers' boats. Some 90 percent of the boats leave from Libya, where the lack of a central authority and an extremist insurgency have contributed to chaos and lawlessness, allowing criminal trafficking networks to proliferate.
The member states on Thursday assigned EU foreign-policy chief Federica Mogherini to line up the diplomatic options that would allow EU militaries to strike against the boats used by traffickers. Officials said the lack of a strong Libyan government would likely make U.N. backing necessary.
French President Francois Hollande said the EU would hold a summit in Malta with African countries by this summer to see how the continents can work together to better deal with a crisis that has grown dramatically in recent years.
Desperate people fleeing war, repression and poverty in Africa and the Middle East increasingly depend on smugglers who charge $1,000 to $2,000 for a spot on overcrowded and unseaworthy boats to make the perilous crossing. Ending that is Europe's main challenge.
More than 10,000 people have been plucked from seas between Italy and Libya just over the past week. Many others have not been saved.
April is already the deadliest month on record, with more than 1,300 fatalities estimated in the Mediterranean. More than 1,776 have died so far this year, the United Nations refugee agency has reported, roughly half the number who perished at sea in all of 2014.
On Thursday, two dozen coffins -- containing the only bodies recovered from a weekend capsizing off Libya that left some 800 people feared dead -- were laid out for a memorial service on the grounds of Malta's main hospital, followed by burial at the island nation's largest cemetery.
"First and foremost, we have to save lives and take the right measures to do so," German Chancellor Angela Merkel said at the summit.
Prime Minister David Cameron said Britain would contribute the navy's flagship, HMS Bulwark, along with three helicopters and two border-patrol ships to the EU effort.
"As the country in Europe with the biggest defense budget, we can make a real contribution," he said, but added that this wouldn't include taking in a share of the foreigners.
Germany, which received more than 200,000 asylum seekers last year -- almost one-third of the union's total -- wants the burden of housing and aiding the refugees to be shared more evenly. Some central and eastern European nations, which saw little immigration in communist times, have been slow to adapt to the demands of European integration.
Meanwhile, southern countries like Italy and Greece, where most of the foreigners arrive, have demanded more money and more action from their richer partners to the north, including Germany.
Merkel said EU leaders also had vowed to increase spending for Operation Poseidon, which is aimed at stemming the flow of foreigners by land and sea to Greece.
The latest draft agreement under discussion calls for the union to create a resettlement program for the foreigners, with 5,000 places available. But with people arriving at a rate of hundreds and sometimes thousands a week, a program of that size likely would soon be swamped.
United Nations agencies and the International Organization for Migration together have called on the Europeans to show leadership in responding to "a tragedy of epic proportions." Amnesty International said before the meeting that the proposals being considered were a "pitifully inadequate and shameful response."
Many of the European leaders also are contending with growing anti-immigration political pressure at home, much of it from far-right parties like the National Front in France, Jobbik in Hungary and the U.K. Independence Party in Britain.
"The EU hasn't had a coherent immigration policy since forever, and the situation is getting worse," said Camino Mortera-Martinez, a research fellow at the Center for European Reform in London. "Now there has been a wake-up call. But I am skeptical that things will change much. Europeans are less concerned about people who are not European."
The EU is now spending about $3.2 million a month on Triton, its border-protection and sea-rescue operation. But the scale of the problem is such that tripling that figure, as the leaders pledged to do, might be inadequate, experts said. And some argued that expanding the program would encourage people to attempt even more perilous journeys to Europe.
Mortera-Martinez said ad hoc measures are unlikely to solve the migration problem and that a robust overhaul is needed, including changing the rule that people must apply for asylum in the countries where they first arrive in Europe. She said that put an unfair burden on the front-line southern nations.
She also dismissed the argument that expanded rescue operations would encourage illegal immigration, saying people in desperate circumstances would seek refuge in Europe in any case.
Tusk said Thursday: "Nobody has any illusions that we can solve the problem today. We cannot because the real causes are war, instability and poverty in the whole region."
Information for this article was contributed by Lorne Cook and Raf Casert of The Associated Press; by Dan Bilefsky of The New York Times; and by staff members of Bloomberg News.
A Section on 04/24/2015