Armed Libyan militia threatened immigrants on board a rickety dinghy travelling to Malta, asking them for their money, kidneys and liver, according to one of the survivors.

Aisha Mustafa, a 25-year-old Lebanese woman who was rescued with her Syrian husband Alaa, 27, told Times of Malta of her harrowing experience yesterday from the open detention camp where she was housed.

“When we left the Libyan port of Zuwara, militiamen followed us with their boats for at least four or five hours and then they came close and pointed their machine guns at us, asking us for our money, our kidneys and our liver.

“Then they started shooting at us and injured two and punctured the boat, which started taking in water,” Ms Mustafa said.

She was one of around 250 people on a boat that capsized some 60 nautical miles south of Lampedusa before being rescued by Maltese and Italian military personnel.

Her claim indicating possible organ trafficking was corroborated by other survivors of the crossing.

She explained she and her husband had paid $3,000 for their space on the boat, along with another $900 for her young daughter.

They came close and pointed their machine guns at us

Asked why she had chosen to reach Europe on a boat, Ms Mustafa said she had no option because they had no paperwork and the Libyans would not even hand over the birth certificate for her child, who was born in the North African country.

“Life in Libya is bad, almost as bad as it was in Syria, where we lived before moving out when I got pregnant,” she said.

But this experience was nothing compared to her grief knowing she was separated from her 17-month-old girl who was rescued and taken to Lampedusa by the Italian navy.

“I know she is alive. I know that for sure because she was in my arms when someone took her on to a boat that was not mine,” she said.

Ms Mustafa and several other asylum seekers who were among the 143 rescued by the Armed Forces of Malta on Friday had little or no news of their loved ones.

She said her worry about her daughter had eased but others were in the dark on the whereabouts of their spouses, children or other close family members.

Ms Mustafa went around asylum seekers with a refugee service volunteer asking them whether they needed shoes, clothes or anything else. Many said they did not.

“We don’t need anything,” they replied. “Thank you, Malta, but we want to go to Italy.

“Thank you, Malta.”