Thirty-five Eritreans and four Ethiopians were rescued at sea by AFM patrol boat P-51 at 3pm 68 nautical miles south of Delimara following a distress call from a satellite phone the previous evening at around 9.45pm by one of the immigrants on board the vessel.

They were spotted by a P-3C Orion plane from the US Navy’s Sixth Fleet base in Sigonella, Sicily, earlier on Friday at around 1.35pm, which had responded to the AFM’s request. This was part of the search and rescue operation launched by the AFM’s rescue and co-ordination centre after receiving the distress call.

The six-metre black dinghy with an outboard motor was escorted to the AFM Maritime Squadron base at Haywharf at around 8.45pm.

Members of the US Navy Patrol Squadron 26 (VP 26) based at Sigonella described to Navy News Stand , the US Navy’s official news agency, how the rescue operation took place.

The dinghy began taking on water about 65 nautical miles south of Malta. A person on the boat called for assistance using a satellite phone and was in communication with the rescue co-ordination centre in Malta.

A search and rescue crew from the squadron received the call at 1.45am on Friday about the situation and took off at 5.30am. An ATL3 Atlantique assigned to the Italian Air Force 41st Stormo also received the call to aid in the search and rescue.

“Someone from the boat used their satellite phone to communicate frequently with the rescue co-ordination centre in Malta to relay information to us and to the Italian plane,” Lieutenant Commander Chip Barnes, mission commander, said. “We took off and split up the area with the Italian aircraft.”

About eight-and-a-half-hours into the flight, VP-26 Combat Air Crew 4, the “Plug Uglies”, spotted the drifting boat. “When we found them they were bailing water,” Commander Barnes said. “From then on, we just talked to the rescue centre, trying to vector in a Maltese Army boat to find them.”

“They were very happy when they saw us,” Lieutenant Colby Morgan, plane commander, said. “They were waving their arms. They were really packed into that little boat.”

The rescue boat was 45 minutes away at this point, and the P-3 was getting low on fuel. “We had one more fly-by left, so we decided, based on the overloaded condition of the boat and the fact they were bailing water, to drop the search-and-rescue kit,” Mission Commander Barnes said.

The search-and-rescue kit consists of two life rafts and a survival kit. It had been a long time since a VP-26 crew has dropped such a kit.

The boat crew’s initial situation was unclear. “We don't know if maybe they were in another boat that sank, but the boat they were in had ran out of gas,” Lieutenant Morgan said.

“The rescue centre called on our way back and said their rescue craft had picked them up,” Lieutenant Jason Romero, a pilot aboard the P3, said. “The rescue co-ordination centre thanked us and wished us a happy Easter.”