ROME: Malta on Friday appeared to have headed off a brewing standoff between a charity rescue ship and Italy’s far-right interior minister by offering to take in migrants saved in the Mediterranean.

A sailboat belonging to Italian charity Med­iterranea on Thursday rescued dozens of people including pregnant women and children off the Libyan coast, but Interior Minister Matteo Salvini vowed not to let them disembark. Salvini accuses NGO rescue vessels of helping smugglers.

“It was decided that Malta will transfer 55 migrants... on board the ship Alex onto a ship of the armed forces of Malta,” the Maltese government said in a statement.

In return, “Italy will take 55 (other) migrants from Malta (as) part of an initiative that promotes a European spirit of cooperation and goodwill between Malta and Italy,” it said.

Salvini lashed out at the boat operated by left-wing activists and carrying at least 11 women, three of them pregnant, and four children, as “disobedient, violent and pirate” if it did not head to Malta.

The Maltese coastguard vessel was to pick up the rescued migrants from the 18-metre (59-foot) sailboat Alex which is currently in international waters off Italy’s Lampedusa island, after Salvini signed a decree forbidding them to approach.

Pending the Maltese vessels arrival, the Italian coastguard evacuated 13 vulnerable people from the Alex to Lampedusa, the charity said.

“They are the most vulnerable (children, women) and their entire families,” Mediterranea tweeted.

The charity said it was still awaiting a safe port for the remaining 41 migrants, calling on Malta to send a vessel as the Alex could not make it to Valletta.

Italian authorities on Lampedusa last week seized a vessel belonging to German aid group Sea-Watch and arrested its captain for unauthorised entry to port with dozens of rescued migrants on board.

On Friday, another German migrant rescue charity, Sea-Eye, said its vessel “Alan Kurdi” had rescued 65 people from an overloaded rubber boat in international waters off the Libyan coast.

The blue dinghy lacked sufficient drinking water for the 64 men and one woman, and there was no satellite phone or navigation aid on board, the group said in a statement.

Sea-Eye said its ship was trying to establish contact with Libyan authorities but had so far received no answer from Tripoli while “the rescue centres in Rome and Valletta are also silent”.

Published in Dawn, July 6th, 2019