A boat of asylum seekers was rescued and brought to Maltese shores on Tuesday morning, along with two people in critical condition.
The two migrants were evacuated off a charity boat by the army last night, according to NGOs.
Following, a tense weekend with over 700 asylum seekers rescued by search and rescue vessels, more than 400 were still drifting in Malta’s SAR in the sweltering heat on Monday.
Three of these boats have since been rescued, two by the Italian authorities and one by the Maltese authorities, NGO Alarm Phone said.
However, one of the boats was intercepted by the Tunisian Coastguard, and a fifth, carrying 80 people, is still unaccounted for, the NGO tweeted.
?️ UPDATE:After many hours of non-assistance, we have learned that two boats were rescued to #Lampedusa and another to #Malta. A fourth boat was intercepted by the Tunisian Coastguard. We still lack information about one boat in distress with ~80 people on board.
— Alarm Phone (@alarm_phone) August 3, 2021
Two people in critical condition aboard the charity boat Nadir were also evacuated by the AFM at 11pm on Monday, after a doctor on board stabilised them. One had suffered a heart attack and had to be resuscitated.
According to NGO Resqhip spokesperson Lukas Kaldenhoff, Nadir encountered the boat drifting with 180 people on Monday at midday. The people on board were in very poor condition, having been at sea for over three days.
“They were all dehydrated and exhausted, but two were especially bad, and the paramedic managed to stabilise them on the boat,” he said.
“We made it clear to the Maltese and Italian authorities that these people needed immediate hospitalisation or they wouldn’t survive,” he added.
Italian authorities rescued the 178 people and the AFM took the two who were critically ill.
The Malta-based charity ship Nadir provided over 700 people with first aid over the last 72 hours, and Kaldenhoff pointed out the condition of some of the people they had encountered was critical.
“It was a very tense 72 hours, and I can tell you if we and other NGOs weren’t on the scene we would be mourning people in three digit numbers,” he underlined.
“Hundreds of people were left alone. The European authorities, including the Maltese authorities did nothing. We contacted them for hours and got no support, people were just left there,” he said.
Questions sent to the AFM about the exact number of arrivals on Tuesday morning and the evacuations, remain unanswered at the time of writing.