The 106 immigrants who have been stranded on board a Spanish warship for four days amid diplomatic wrangling were yesterday transferred aboard a Tunisian naval vessel.

The Home Affairs Ministry said the Armed Forces of Malta’s rescue coordination centre had received confirmation from Nato’s maritime operations centre in Naples that the immigrants had been transferred and the operation was concluded at 9.30 a.m. yesterday.

The destroyer involved in Nato operations, Admiral Juan de Borbon, left international waters off Malta on Friday evening and headed southwest for the transfer operation that was carried out in collaboration with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

The warship had rescued 111 immigrants off the Libyan coast on Monday, but the operation stalled as Spain, Malta and Nato argued over who should assume responsibility for them.

Five of the immigrants had to be airlifted to Malta for medical treatment where they remain, while the rest – mostly Ghanaians, Libyans and Tunisians – will be taken to the Dehiba refugee camp in Tunisia.

The migrants were picked up off Libya and started heading to Malta even though it was 78 nautical miles from Tunisia, 88 nautical miles from Lampedusa and 141 nautical miles from Malta.

Malta dug in its heels and refused the warship entry, insisting the rescue had taken place closer to the other countries and that they should therefore have been transferred there.

During the week, international media reports said the warship had proceeded to Lampedusa but the Italian authorities refused entry and directed the destroyer to Malta. The ministry had said it had no information about this.

Reacting yesterday, the ministry said: “The government of Malta thanks all parties directly involved in the logical conclusion to this search and rescue operation.”

When contacted, UNHCR Malta head Jon Hoisaeter said the agency welcomed the fact that a solution had been found and expressed appreciation for Tunisia’s readiness to receive the people who were rescued almost a week ago.

This incident, he said, illustrated the urgent need to address the issue of disembarkation in a principled, practical and cooperative manner to ensure commercial or military vessels, who became engaged in rescue at sea, were not left without options for bringing people to safety.

“This has been a long-standing problem and it is not the first time that rescue solutions have been held up due to lack of agreement between countries when it comes to disembarkation,” he told The Sunday Times.

The UNHCR is calling on states and other maritime actors to strengthen efforts to coordinate and affect rescue-at-sea, as required by international law, to prevent as far as possible further loss of life “on the tragic scale we have seen in recent months”.

Where asylum seekers are among those rescued, they must have access to protection. Responsibility-sharing among states should be part of such arrangements and UNHCR would like to see European states playing a greater role in this context.

“It is noteworthy that the people who were rescued in this situation are being brought to port in the country which has received the lion’s share of the population movement from Libya,” Mr Hoisaeter said.

Well over a million individuals have fled Libya with the Tunisian government opening its borders for more than 700,000 people, including migrant workers, refugees and asylum seekers.

Some are still sheltered in difficult conditions in the border region. In contrast, Mr Hoisaeter pointed out, less than two per cent of those who fled Libya have arrived in Europe.

In Tunisia, the UNHCR is involved in an ongoing effort to ensure further resettlement places can be offered for those in need of international protection.

A similar incident occurred five years ago – in July 2006 – when 51 African immigrants were stranded off Malta’s coast on board a Spanish trawler, Francisco y Catalina, for one week.

At the time, the Maltese government, which had its hands full with a constant flow of illegal migrants seeking refuge, refused the boat entry on grounds that the immigrants had not been picked up within the island’s search and rescue area.

The trawler had become a symbol of Europe’s immigration dilemma as countries haggled for days over who should take them.