ISIS Militants Infiltrating Migrant Trips From Libya
SESAY: Welcome back, everyone. There is some significant damage right in the heart of one of Italy's most famous cities. A giant hole swallowed up part of a street near the (inaudible) River in Florence.</s>VAUSE: Officials say a water main burst in the ground above gateway taking about 20 cars with it. Later, another ten meters of the city fell apart. No one was hurt. The two buildings were evacuated as a precaution. Warmer weather and calmer seas are luring more migrants to Europe and the results are being deadly. These dramatic images show what happened in the Mediterranean when an Italian patrol boat approached an overcrowded migrant boat to offer life jackets. The passengers rushed to one side causing the boat to rock violently before capsizing.</s>SESAY: The Italian crew lifejackets to the people who spilled into the sea. The Navy says more than 560 migrants are rescued, but five people died.</s>VAUSE: These migrants making this dangerous journey and now facing another ominous risk.</s>SESAY: Yes, Libyan officials tell CNN ISIS militants are infiltrating the migrant groups so they can establish (inaudible) in Europe. Nick Paton Walsh have this exclusive report.</s>NICK PATON WALSH, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This is the moment when desperate dreams come to an end. We are with the Libyan immigration police in a warehouse of migrant hopefuls that just raided right on the Tripoli beachfront. As Turkey and Greece closed their shores, the Libyan route to Europe has exploded again. Here among the squalor that a lifetime savings buys is where fantasies of a future in Europe falls apart. (on camera): Where are you from?</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: From Nigeria.</s>WALSH (voice-over): (Inaudible) fled ISIS loyal Boko Haram in Nigeria whose bombs killed his father and brother. He survived the desert trek until here. This is the smuggler's neighborhood and there is a new threat.</s>EUGENE, NIGERIAN REFUGEE: (Inaudible).</s>WALSH: We leave quickly as this is the smugglers neighborhood, but there is a new threat here. Smugglers and police telling us that ISIS have hidden fighters among other groups of migrants bound for Europe. (on camera): This trade in human souls is awful enough until you think that perhaps ISIS are using this passage of human life into Europe to try and infiltrate with sleeper cells. (voice-over): Police tells off camera they've caught different other migrants with ISIS links and a top Libyan intelligence official warns us the threat is real.</s>ISMAIL AL-SHUKAI, MISRATA POLICE COMMANDER (through translator): ISIS can be among the legal immigrants on the boats. They travel with families without weapons as normal illegal immigrants. They will wear an American dress and have English language papers so they cause no suspicion.</s>WALSH: There is a huge and un-patrolable coastline where smugglers rule. We talked to one who said in the past two months that ISIS has become part of the trade.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: About 2 weeks ago, a boat left the ISIS stronghold, Sirt (ph), among them were about 40 ISIS heading to Europe, but bad weather turned them back. Ten days later they tried again and I don't know if they got there. About a month ago, I got a call from a devout guy I knew was ISIS, he wanted a small boat for 25 people and was willing to pay about $40,000. I didn't take the deal. (on camera): Do you and other smugglers feel comfortable moving people who know maybe ISIS towards Europe.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): Smugglers only interested in smuggling, ISIS, anyone, they don't care. Only money matters.</s>WALSH (voice-over): The Libyan state is torn apart by the in- fighting. Its coast guard is struggling to even find boats. (on camera): Fighting the migrant trade across this the whole coastline of the Libyan capital, Tripoli adjust six boats like this. It's not in particularly good service. You simply can't imagine how under resourced things are here so close to Europe. These are the desperate scenes as they tried to rescue some African migrants whose dinghy collapsed late last year. Smugglers now prefer these dinghies, vulnerable to the slightest weather change. Some are fleeing ISIS themselves only to find ISIS now seek to hijack their deadly journey to spread more suffering. Nick Paton Walsh, CNN, Tripoli.</s>SESAY: I want to delve deeper into ISIS now and the impact on communities. Our senior international correspondent, Arwa Damon is here. She is not in the field. She is here in the studio in L.A. Welcome. You know, Falluja in the headlines right now, with Iraqi offensive on the way to try and retake that city. And of course, we know tens of thousands of people are trapped in that city. The fear is there will be a humanitarian crisis if it isn't already underway. What are you hearing about the situation?</s>ARWA DAMON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: This will give you a bit of an idea of how difficult it is. People can't get a cell phone signal very easily anymore. So to do that, they go to the roof of their homes to try to make a call or even reach our sources there. If you are spotted by ISIS on the roof of your home, they automatically assume that you might helping to direct coalition airstrikes so even that a phone call could possibly make you a target. People can't leave Falluja. ISIS will not let them go. Some have managed to escape and navigate their way at great risk to themselves. Some of them even fighting their way out to try to get to these alleged corridors that the government established. That's not easy. If people could flee Falluja, that would be the best case scenario. Right now, they are literally trapped, afraid they will get killed at any moment in the air strikes or in the clashes when they eventually do reach the city.</s>VAUSE: So here is the situation right now in Falluja. If you are a resident there, the government said get out. If you try to get out and you are a Sunni and you make it to the outskirts, you are confronted by the Shia militia. They are going to shoot you. If you stay inside and put a white flag above your house. If you do that ISIS will shoot you. If you stay in town and do nothing, you will get killed by a U.S. air strike. About 50,000 people in a no win situation right now.</s>DAMON: It's a completely impossible situation. This is a city that ISIS has had years to booby trap and really entrench itself into. There is no logical situation for a civilian who wants to get out. There is no way to protect your family or yourself. The government has to be the entity in all of these different players that somehow tries to find a solution to this impossible scenario. There is no easy solution and way to ensure that you are going to protect civilians or attempt to because they are in the scenario. We saw ISIS doing this in some of the villages outside of Mosul where they took the civilian population in the village and put them in the home in the middle of the village and wouldn't let them leave. They were shooting at Iraqi Security Forces out of the same building. Of course, people are going to die.</s>SESAY: You were in Tikrit over a year ago after they retook it. You have seen firsthand what ISIS does to -- take hold of them basically.</s>DAMON: ISIS was only in Tikrit for a short period of time and they had managed to booby trapped buildings and roads. They had bombs and explosives just about every single corner of that city. That pales in comparison as to what they have in Falluja and then it's going to pale in comparison as to what they have in Mosul. My big concern is how much do we know about how far ISIS is willing to go to try to maintain control over these key cities because we know that they're willing to die for this fight. How many other people are going to have to die for it?</s>VAUSE: And of course, all of this turmoil in Iraq and Syria and other places, a lot of Iraq is driving this migrant crisis that we are seeing in Europe right now. Last year, you were on the Hungary and Serbia border. You were live at the time and there was a rush to get across the border. This is what happened.</s>DAMON: The break out from the holding area in the field. These are all people that just managed to break out and they have been running now for about the last half hour, and they have been running through the sun flower fields, the cornfields. They are very afraid because you can see there, they are noticing that the police are over the side. We've been hearing sirens. The groups with the children -- the groups with the children are the ones that are falling behind. That's why you see them coming up along the end.</s>VAUSE: You feel them being pushed away by ISIS and the little boy waving at the camera. Do you know what happened to those people? Did they make it through?</s>DAMON: That group probably did make it through at the time because the route was relatively speaking, open per se. They have all of these borders. That day was such an epitome of what these people are facing. They have been treated like garbage by the Hungarian police and they were made to wait in the sun. I have seen a lot, but never seen something as jarring as what I had seen in these European countries. When you get there, you are not supposed to suffer that much. They will have dignity and these people decided to break through the police lines because they couldn't take it anymore. They sacrificed so much to get to that point and couldn't allow themselves to be at the mercy of others who clearly at that stage were not treating them with the respect and dignity they thought they would find and had to make it. They literally snapped and broke through the line and ran.</s>VAUSE: Out of desperation. Arwa, thanks for coming in.</s>SESAY: Incredible reporting.</s>VAUSE: You were in town to pick up an award. You got another award which you really deserve.</s>SESAY: Very, very well deserved. We will take a quick break now. As world leaders gather in Japan for the G7 Summit, U.S. President Barack Obama is apologizing to the host nation. Details ahead.</s>VAUSE: And also ahead, a possible casualty of the war on (inaudible). Hollywood power couple, Johnny Depp is getting a divorce.