Warnings over a dilapidated structure close to an area where a 22-year-old woman was crushed to death by falling rocks on Friday went ignored, activists have claimed.

Two people say they have been publicly warning authorities about the danger for months and have questioned whether the tragedy was caused by falling debris from the old military battery perched on the cliff.

Adventurer and activist Conrad Neil Gatt and independent candidate Arnold Cassola took to social media Saturday, asking whether the "terrible loss of life could have been avoided" if the authorities had restored the battery in time.

Mirabelle Falzon, 22, died on Friday after being crushed under a rockfall while she was at a swimming spot in an area known as il-Munxar, within the limits of St Thomas Bay in Marsascala.

Civil protection officers and a medical team rushed to her rescue but she died shortly afterwards, with tributes from her boyfriend, family and friends pouring in on social media throughout Friday and Saturday.

Gatt and Cassola said they had warned about the state of the battery weeks before, but the authorities seemed to not have heeded those warnings.

Cassola said he first wrote about the battery in March last year and again in June this year, and Gatt had filmed himself walking around and inside the structure to show its dangers.

It is still unclear, however, whether the rocks that crushed Falzon to death were falling from the dilapidated battery or from some other part of the cliff, and a magisterial inquiry is ongoing.

The building is known as Riħama, and is a historic artillery battery built by the Knights of Malta in the 18th century as part of a series of coastal fortifications to protect the island. It has a pentagonal gun platform, but it has been left dilapidated for years and parts of it have collapsed into the sea.

Tributes poured in

On Friday, when Falzon's tragic death was announced, her boyfriend Keith Cutajar was among the first to post a tribute to social media. He was with her when the incident happened and said he did everything he could to save her.

“How am I going to live without you, you were my world and I'm going to go crazy without you. Oh how I wish I could hug you for one last time,” he said. 

Miguel Falzon, her brother, said she would put her soul in everything she did.

Friends and former classmates, meanwhile, expressed sorrow at Falzon’s death, remembering her as a joyful and kind person, always ready with a joke.