The Sea-Watch 3 has received a distress call from another boat of migrants and has mounted a search for the troubled vessel.
Contacted by The Malta Independent, a spokesperson for the NGO said that their boat had received an Inmarsat satellite message from the Italian Coastguard's Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre (MRCC) in Rome on Thursday morning about a boat of migrants which was in distress.
The Sea-Watch 3, however, did not clear co-ordinates of where the distressed vessel was, and so they headed south towards what was an estimated interception point. Until now, however, the spokesperson said, the Sea-Watch had not received any further communication from MRCC Rome and they had not found the boat. The search for the distressed vessel is still ongoing.
The NGO was in the news on Thursday after it claimed that five countries, Malta being one of them, had refused to provide the Sea-Watch with a safe port to discharge 32 migrants that had been rescued six days prior.
"Five countries of the so-called Christian West have denied the rescue ship Sea-Watch 3, its crew of 22, and their 32 rescued guests any help in finding a port of safety over the Christmas holidays. The ship remains stranded at sea – in yet another political limbo, proving the EU's blatant reluctance to make even the smallest humanitarian concession to its deadly anti-migration policy", the NGO said in a statement issued on Thursday.
The five countries mentioned are Malta, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and Germany. There are four women, three unaccompanied minors, two young children and a baby amongst those 32 rescued. It is not immediately clear how many migrants are onboard the boat that the Sea-Watch is currently searching for.
The Sea-Watch was the centre of controversy over the summer after it was blocked from leaving Malta for nearly four months.
from The Malta Independent http://bit.ly/2ER6Aoy
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