Police fired rubber pellets to quell a violent migrant uprising at the Ħal Far detention centre which started when MPs visited yesterday.

Sources said the violence was likely sparked by a number of Nigerian detainees whose asylum applications were declined on Monday.

The riot started at around noon and repeated shots were heard as riot police fired rubber pellets in an attempt to control the immigrants who were hurling whatever came to hand and scaling the walls.

Journalists who were outside the fenced centre could hear the high-pitched shouting of roughly 95 Nigerian and Somali migrants echoing across the surrounding fields as wave after wave of riot police stormed the men’s dormitory.

In a statement, the National Security Ministry insisted nobody had been injured and the ambulance had arrived to take an immigrant “who had fainted” to hospital.

The migrants’ tempers first flared when the Parliamentary Immigration Committee arrived at the centre towards noon. The visit, meant to assess their living conditions, was cut short when a number of migrants started beating on the Perspex windows and chanting for “freedom”.

Outside I saw people banging on the windows and shouting ‘we are not slaves

Nationalist Party MP Claudette Buttigieg was one of the nearest to the detainees. She said before entering the building she had noticed an immigrant in the yard who climbed on to the barred windows.

“It seemed as if he was trying to attract our attention, which is only natural and something we had already experienced when we visited the Safi detention centre last December,” she said.

“We then entered the building, accompanied by detention officers, and heard loud banging.

“We assumed it was to attract our attention but the noise kept on increasing and the detention officers asked us to leave the building. Outside I saw people on the second floor banging on the Perspex windows and shouting slogans such as ‘freedom’ and ‘we are not slaves’,” she added, insisting that at no point did she feel unsafe or threatened.

Times of Malta arrived on the scene shortly after the MPs were escorted from the site and saw some two dozen armed officers entering the building, batons raised above their heads and riot shields at the ready.

Inside, furniture was heard being broken, with sources claiming the pieces were used as makeshift batons by the migrants. As the waves of police grew so too did the migrants’ pleas for liberation and cries of anguish. One called out: “I have been here two years and every day they tell me tomorrow I will be free. F*** you Malta, I am not a criminal.”

Meanwhile, another migrant who appeared to be semi-conscious was seen being pulled out and handcuffed with plastic cable ties.

At one point the riot police had at least 10 migrants lying face down on the ground as another two officers pointed assault rifles at the windows, from which bags of sugar and cartons of milk were being hurled.

The police made their final assault from the building’s western entrance. Screams were heard growing into howls of agony.

A semi-conscious migrant was carried out and taken to Mater Dei Hospital while a number were arrested.

The ministry said the warning shots were fired after migrants started throwing stones from the second storey windows of the dormitory building.

It clarified that no rubber bullets were fired, adding that a number of rubber pellets were fired to calm the situation.

Sources said there had been a number of suicide attempts by detainees in recent weeks. A spokeswoman for the Jesuit Refugees Service, which offers support to detained migrants, said the JRS did not have figures on the number of suicide attempts but these tended to increase when detainees were not granted asylum.

“Migrants are most vulnerable when they have their asylum applications turned down. They are basically told that they will be staying in detention for much longer and this can have a very negative effect on migrants,” she said.

Additional reporting: Kurt Sansone