Updated 9.45pm

Rescue NGO Sea Watch has dispatched a vessel to a rubber dinghy believed to be sinking to the south of Malta, saying that there were already people floundering in the water, while the Italian Navy has also sent a vessel to the area and recovered some corpses.

The NGO said that it had picked up communication about the ‘distress case’ but that a merchant vessel nearby was not responding.

The Italian search and rescue centre, when contacted, referred the NGO to the centre in Tripoli, saying that it would be responsible, but the NGO failed to get any information. The Maltese search and rescue centre is involved in coordinating the response but is not responsible, according to a spokesman for the airborne section of Sea Watch.

The NGO said that in the absence of any information it dispatched one of its vessels, noting that it would take the boat 10 hours to get to the site.

The latest information from Sea Watch is that there are 50 persons on board the rubber boat and that there were already two people in the water. The Italian Navy later updated the figure to 20 in the dinghy, with as many as four believed drowned.

"The rubber boat was already half sunken and so more casualties are likely," the Sea Watch spokesman told the Times of Malta.

The spokesman also lamented that the merchant vessel was not responding: "It shows that the overall situation of closing ports, refusing coordination and criminalising rescuers has an effect on merchant vessels, who try everything to avoid being involved in search and rescue events."

In December, two vessels were stranded in Maltese waters after rescuing 49 migrants. After a few weeks at sea, the Maltese eventually allowed them to disembark.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.