About 500 onboard boat in distress in Mediterranean, NGO says

About 500 refugees and migrants are onboard a boat in distress in the Mediterranean Sea after departing Libya for Europe, humanitarian organisations say.

Italian NGO Emergency said on Wednesday that the vessel – which has 45 women and 56 children on it, including a baby born overnight at sea – was taking on water.It said its rescue vessel Life Support was heading towards the boat but needed another 10 hours to reach the location in Maltese waters.

The nationalities of those onboard remain unknown.

“It’s a race against time in an attempt to save as many lives as possible,” Albert Mayordomo, head of mission on the Life Support, said in a statement sent to Al Jazeera. “The absence of coordination on the part of the authorities is a grave violation of the law of the sea.”

Emergency said it had contacted Maltese authorities, in line with maritime procedures, but had received no response since Tuesday when the vessel was flagged by Alarm Phone, a non-governmental organisation that relays distress calls from the Mediterranean to emergency services.Emergency said it also had forwarded a request for assistance to the Italian Maritime Rescue Coordination Center, which responded by saying that the case falls under the mandate of Maltese authorities.

The Maltese coastguard did not respond to Al Jazeera’s requests for comment while Italian authorities declined to comment.

Paolo Fusarini, captain of Life Support, said his crew was preparing for a difficult night-time rescue.

“Weather conditions are not favourable,” he said in a statement sent to Al Jazeera. “We are going towards waves of 1.5 meters that will make the operation more difficult.”

Fusarini said he was not too hopeful of reaching the location in time and feared that many people would drown before Life Support gets there.

On Tuesday, Alarm Phone said local authorities had been informed of the boat’s presence without specifying whether they were Maltese or Italian officials.

Shortly after, German NGO Sea-Watch said it had sent its light observation aircraft, Sea Bird, to locate the vessel.

On Wednesday, Alarm Phone said it had lost contact with the boat.

“We lost contact this morning, after we continuously alerted & updated the authorities in #Malta and #Italy,” it said. “500 people cannot simply disappear!”

Sea-Watch was unable to locate the boat and said in a tweet, “The fact that the Maltese sea rescue coordination center ignored our calls is unacceptable. We demand immediate clarification.”‘Italy delays, Malta ignores’
This month, the European Council on Refugees and Exiles, a European network of 105 NGOs in 39 European countries, summed up the situation at play in the Mediterranean: “Italy delays, Malta ignores, Tunisia and Libya pull back and abuse.”

“The Italian authorities continue the policy of assigning distant ports to NGO rescue vessels for the disembarkation of survivors,” it said. “Malta failed to rescue more than 7,000 people in distress in the country’s SAR [search and rescue] zone in 2022 and reports of non-response tactics continue to mount.”

On January 2, the Italian government passed legislation requiring captains of rescue ships to request a port immediately after a rescue rather than continuing at sea and assisting with multiple distress calls.