Five migrants, including a baby and a woman, were brought to Malta on a US aircraft yesterday, following a relentless 12 hours which saw passengers on 25 vessels being rescued simultaneously.

The Armed Forced of Malta described it as the “largest aero-naval search and rescue operation” in Mediterranean for years, involving the Italian and the US Navy as well as all merchant ships in the area.

In a tweet, Prime Minister Joseph Muscat praised the AFM, Italy and the US Navy for their efforts, highlighting, critically, that Europe was “totally absent”.

The rescue efforts started at 10am on Friday after two boats were spotted in trouble south of Malta and the operation did not ease until yesterday late afternoon.

The migrants brought to Malta came from a US warship. They landed at Malta International Airport and were then transferred to Mater Dei Hospital.

The AFM said one of its vessels rescued 103 migrants, 13 of whom were females and one baby, after their dinghy deflated and all the people on board ended up at sea.

The group was eventually transferred to the Italian authorities.

The operation, coordinated by Malta and Italy, forms part of operation Mare Nostrum, in which the Italian Navy has taken charge of a patrol line north of Libya in a bid to avoid a repeat of the tragedies off Lampedusa in October 2013 when some 400 men, women and children, mostly Syrians, died in just two incidents when their boats capsised.

The Italian government undertook a commitment to avoid loss of life after those incidents, but the country is now under severe pressure due to the cost (said to run in the billions of euros) and logistical challenge of the operation.

Earlier last week, Italian Home Affairs Minister Angelino Alfano warned that Italy could not continue to bear the cost of the operation on its own. In a statement yesterday, the Italian Navy said it had rescued a total of 17 migrant boats that had departed from the coast of North Africa, and some 2,500 migrants in just 24 hours. The Italian Coast Guard said it had rescued another 300 people in a boat in trouble some 42 miles south of the island of Lampedusa. Moreover, a merchant ship rescued 94 more migrants and was taking them to Catania.

The Mare Nostrum operation has resulted in Malta receiving practically no migrants for months on end. But this is happening at a time when the Mediterranean is experiencing a very high number of crossings.

According to Frontex, 42,000 irregular immigrants entered the EU in the first four months of this year.