An Armed Forces of Malta patrol boat and helicopter embarked on a fruitless search mission yesterday after receiving reports of four bodies floating off Zonqor Point, Marsascala.

An AFM patrol boat was dispatched to the area to conduct a search but in the end yielded nothing but chunks of tuna floating in the water, which had obviously been mistaken for bodies.

Having searched throughout the morning without results, an AFM helicopter joined the patrol boat in order to close off the search area and confirm the patrol boat’s findings.

The false alarm comes less than two weeks after a still-unidentified body, in an advanced state of decomposition, was washed ashore in Marsascala.

In early November, a diver off Delimara Point had come across a box of bones and initial speculation was that it contained the remains of murdered fisherman Brian Rosso, whose body is still missing. It was later established that the box’s contents were animal bones.

Despite the fact that the area of sea between Malta and Sicily, as well as that between Malta and Libya, has been described as an underground cemetery for literally thousands of irregular African migrants trying to make their way to Europe, the bodies of such failed migrants, unlike in Sicily, have not ended up on Maltese shores.

An autopsy and identification of the body washed up in Marsascala is, however, still pending.