Migrants at sea lose contact with NGO, prompting fears of a Libya pushback

A group of 71 migrants floating in Maltese waters went out of contact on Sunday morning, with an NGO saying it feared the boat would be pushed back to Libya.  According to NGO Alarm Phone, the group, who are travelling on a packed rubber dinghy, first made contact on Saturday evening while drifting in the Maltese Search and Rescue zone.  At around 8pm on Saturday, 10 people who had been perched on the sides of the vessel fell overboard and tore part of the dinghy in the process, causing it to start taking in water.  After calling for help, the group had managed to bring the people who had fallen into the water back on board and control the damage.  Migrants then reported that members of the Armed Forces of Malta approached the dinghy in the P61 patrol boat and distributed some water to those on board, Alarm Phone said.  But on Sunday morning, the migrants could no longer be reached.  “We lost contact at around 8.30 am. There isn’t much wind so the boat hasn’t been moving much in the past few hours,” an Alarm Phone volunteer told Times of Malta.  “The Maltese authorities do not answer our calls but we still send them regular updates. When they arrived on the scene yesterday we...