Rome: An African migrant gave birth to a baby on the Mediterranean rescue ship Geo Barents and has been flown to hospital with her four children, the aid organisation Doctors Without Borders (MSF) tweeted late on Wednesday.
The family was taken to the Italian island of Lampedusa.
At the same time, another woman on the Geo Barents, who had also been rescued from a refugee boat while heavily pregnant, was taken to Malta by helicopter.
The international aid ship had been carrying 255 people before the evacuations.
They had been rescued by rubber dinghies that left from Libya.
Shortly after the people boarded the Geo Barents, the African woman went into labour - after seven hours, the baby boy, given the alias Ali, was born.
The news comes amidst the ongoing dispute between rescue ships in the Mediterranean who demand safe entry for the rescued migrants into the EU and Italy's government who refuse to take in any more refugees.
MSF said that Malta had offered to take only the mother and the newborn off the ship. The crew refused the offer, as it would have meant that the three other children under the age of eleven would have stayed behind.
Late on Wednesday night, it was then announced that all five would be allowed to go to Lampedusa.
Meanwhile, the private German rescue ship Humanity 1 set sail towards Sicily with 261 migrants on board which had been rescued off the coast of Libya.
It is currently off the Italian coast in international waters and has requested to dock. Authorities have not yet responded to the requests, according to the aid organisation SOS Humanity.
Another private German ship, the Louise Michel, which rescued more than 30 people in distress at sea on Tuesday evening, is also in the central Mediterranean, looking to dock.
The refugees often set off from Libya or Tunisia. The boats they are on are usually overcrowded and unseaworthy, making the crossing very dangerous.
Italy, which recently tightened its migration policy under the new right-wing government of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, criticises the rescue operations.
This year nearly 95,000 migrants reached the country by boat,according to official figures.
According to the United Nations, more than 1,360 migrants have died or gone missing in the central Mediterranean this year alone. — dpa
Oman Observer is now on the WhatsApp channel. Click here
