Valletta: Malta on Saturday disembarked 356 migrants, who had been trapped for two weeks on a rescue ship in the central Mediterranean.
A Maltese armed forces vessel brought the migrants to the country's capital Valletta. They had been transferred from the humanitarian ship 'Ocean Viking'.
It was not immediately clear why the transfer to military vessels happened in the international waters and the charity boat wasn't allowed to directly take the migrants to the port.
Rescued migrants disembark in Malta The aid ship has a passenger capacity of around 200 and picked up the migrants in four rescue efforts off the coast of Libya from August 9-12.
SOS Mediterranee and Doctors Without Borders, the two charities running the Norwegian-flagged Ocean Viking, had said that requests for docking had been previously denied by Malta and ignored by Italy.
The migrants' arrival in Malta capped a week of standoffs between charities and governments, exposing Europe's inability to deal with migration from Africa.
Malta is urging France, Germany, Portugal, Romania, Luxembourg and Ireland, the countries which have offered to take the migrants, to quickly live up to their pledges.
The European Union's border and asylum agencies will help screen people before they are relocated.
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