A humanitarian rescue ship said it will be entering Maltese waters on Friday, seeking shelter for 106 people rescued from Libyan waters. just a day before Pope Francis lands on the island.
The Sea-Eye ship said in a statement it will be appealing to Malta to take the migrants, who left Libya last Sunday.
The pope has signalled that migration will be the focus of his visit and will be visiting the Ħal Far laboratory, which houses migrants, on Sunday.
“Perhaps an unequivocal appeal by the Pope to the Maltese government can make Malta, as the closest EU state, feel responsible for 106 people seeking protection,” Sea-Eye chairman Gorden Isler said.
Sea-Eye said it received the distress call on Wednesday afternoon.
After several hours of sailing, the rescue vessel found a grey rubber boat with 74 people, including 22 children aboard.
Fifteen had to be treated in the ship's sick bay. The migrants come from Egypt, Nigeria, Sudan, South Sudan and Syria.
Together with 32 rescued people who were taken over by the Sea-Eye 4 from the container ship Karina on Tuesday, there are now 106 rescued people on board. The container ship had rescued the 32 from a small fishing boat in four-metre waves.
Isler said that another emergency call reported by Alarm Phone led to an all-night search for 90 people in distress on Wednesday. But the search was unsuccessful and had to be interrupted on Thursday morning because the coordinates of another boat with 145 people in distress were reported to the ship.
But before it could reach the boat in distress, Alarm Phone had already reported an illegal push-back by the Libyan Coast Guard.
Isler said there is no information about the whereabouts of the 90 people, even if the probability of a push-back is very high in this case as well.
He said the Sea-Eye 4 must now find a safe place to disembark 106 people from six countries of origin.
“If the people hadn't been rescued, it would have been very unlikely that they would have survived, because the weather has changed suddenly in the last few days.”
The Maltese authorities have repeatedly been accused by humanitarian NGOs of turning a blind eye to rescued migrants off the island's shores. Malta has also been accused of turning back migrants to Libya, a claim rejected by the authorities.