By Karl Stagno-Navarra.
Malta, 31 May:
Another group of Eritrean and Somali refugees who had set sail from Libya were this morning brought . . .[restrict]in to Malta after being rescued from a sinking dinghy on the high seas, to the South West of Malta.
The migrants – 65 in all – were said to have been seeking assistance since last Tuesday after their engine failed and drifted in the Mediterranean.
The Maltese Armed Forces were informed about the distressed migrants by the Italian rescue coordination centre in Rome, which also involved the Libyan navy which searched for the dinghy according to sporadic coordinates which were collected from brief satellite phone calls for help by the same migrants.
It was only yesterday afternoon, while parliament debated the a motion which led to the resignation later in the evening of home affairs minister Carm Mifsud Bonnici, that the AFM intercepted the sinking dinghy and rescued the migrants.
Shortly before resigning, Carm Mifsud Bonnici announced that Libya’s interior minister and the UNHCR chief will be in Malta for talks next week, in a bid to find solutions to the current migrant emergency.
This morning’s arrival brings the total of migrants arriving in Malta to almost 400 since the weekend.
Malta Today [/restrict]
