The bright blue bag hanging from a toddler’s back bobbed over the heads of army personnel as they lifted the boy off a patrol boat that brought in 41 irregular immigrants, yesterday.

Claiming to be Syrians and Palestinians, the arrivals included two babies, eight children and 11 women. Four of them looked Sub-Saharan.

The migrants were rescued in a joint Maltese-Italian operation very early yesterday morning and were brought to at Hay Wharf in the afternoon.

Some carrying bags and others barefoot, they looked weary but, all in all, in good health as they were helped off the boat to two police vans. The children had been given toys and biscuits, donated by a wholesaler, on board.

The alert was raised on Monday night by a Maltese-registered tug boat, the Hispania Uno. The migrants were located just one mile inside the Maltese search and rescue region, 89 nautical miles south of the island.

Some carrying bags and others barefoot, they looked weary

The AFM operations centre instructed the Hispania Uno and the Italian patrol boat assisting in the rescue to head towards the migrants to provide assistance.

An AFM vessel that had been on patrol since Sunday morning and was returning to base was rerouted and met the Italian Coast Guard vessel. The tug boat and the Italian boat assisted until the migrants were transferred to the AFM patrol boat, which brought them to Malta, the nearest safe harbour.

This was the first group of migrants rescued since October 17 when 129 irregular migrants were landed in Malta after being rescued by a US navy ship. Just a week before, between 50 and 200 migrants perished when their boat capsized 120 miles south west of Malta. Many of the Syrian and Palestinian survivors of that tragedy were brought to Malta.

The AFM was last night closely following another migrant vessel to the south of the island.