Updated 3pm

Malta has refused to provide a safe port to more than 200 people rescued within its search-and-rescue area this week.

The 233 people, including four pregnant women and eight children, two of whom suffering bone fractures, were rescued in four operations between Thursday and Friday.

Times of Malta is informed that Maltese authorities turned down a request for disembarkation from German NGO Sea-Eye on Saturday afternoon.  

In a reply to the group’s request for assistance, the Armed Forces said that “Malta is not in a position to provide you with a place of safety”. 

The AFM’s rescue coordination centre instead directed the group to the nearest port of safety, which it said was Tunisia.

The refusal to provide assistance comes just a week before Christmas.  

Meanwhile, a search for a fifth boat in distress remains unsuccessful, a spokesperson for the German NGO told Times of Malta on Saturday afternoon.

The spot of the four rescues (the first two took place in the location towards the bottom of the image). The green lines indicate territorial waters, while the red ones delineate the SAR zone. Photo: Sea-Eye

"The Sea-Eye 4 made a total of four rescues with four boats in the Maltese search-and-rescue and coordination zone.

"The Sea-Eye informed Malta's rescue coordination centre about every step. The RCC Malta has completely denied its responsibility. It did not respond to our emails, nor did it take over the coordination of these SAR cases," he said.

The spokesperson added that Malta has the means and resources to reduce mortality in the Mediterranean.

"But for political reasons, Malta is violating this basic humanitarian principle," he said.

The position of the Sea-Eye 4 on Saturday afternoon. Photo: Sea-Eye

"RCC Malta has standardised its breaches of duty. This development is very worrying. It cannot be that only the so-called Libyan coast guard operates in the Maltese SAR zone.

"The Maltese government is following the path of the Greek, Hungarian and Polish governments," he said, adding that the Maltese government was turning into "the gravedigger of the Geneva Refugee Convention".

Just three weeks ago, a separate humanitarian NGO, Alarm Phone, urged the Maltese authorities to save some 430 people within Malta's SAR.

Three people died in that incident but Tunisia took them in as they were risking shipwreck.

In September, the European Union Fundamental Rights Agency flagged Malta's "intensified efforts" to stop asylum seekers from disembarking on the island during the pandemic.