The children came first. One by one they were handed onto the Ocean Viking search and rescue boat.
Among them, a small, frail and dehydrated crippled boy. His wheelchair was still in the wooden boat, along with some of the adults.
They had spent two days at sea after leaving from Zuwara, a port city in Libya. They had also just made a narrow escape from the Libyan Coast Guard.
The Libyans had intercepted them around 10 nautical miles inside Malta's search-and-rescue zone.
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Nikolaj Nielsen, an EUobserver journalist, is embedded on the Ocean Viking for the coming weeks, reporting exclusively from the boat on the Mediterranean migration route.