The Spanish rescue ship Open Arms resorted to serving pizzas to 107 increasingly angry migrants who are stranded aboard, as Italy's interior minister stuck to his refusal to let the vessel dock at a nearby Italian island.
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The migrants were rescued from traffickers' boats in the Mediterranean off Libya and have spent 18 days aboard the Open Arms as they wait to see whether anti-migrant Interior Minister Matteo Salvini will let them disembark on Lampedusa, a tiny Italian island south of Sicily.
Six other European Union countries have agreed to take the passengers.
A day earlier, Open Arms' captain informed Italian authorities that the crew of 17 could no longer control the situation aboard.
Separately, the organisation's founder, Oscar Camps, told The Associated Press in a phone interview Monday night from Lampedusa, that "No one knows what will happen".
"At every instant we must stop fights, aggression, arguments, hunger strikes and stop people from jumping into the sea," he said.
Open Arms sailed within a few hundred metres of Lampedusa last week after winning a court ruling overturning Salvini's ban on private rescue boats entering Italy's territorial waters. Salvini has appealed that ruling and warned that the ban on docking still holds.
The boat is currently anchored off Lampedusa's coast.
Earlier in the day, Open Arms' president, Riccardo Gatti, suggested that the migrants could be transferred to the major Sicilian city of Catania, where a chartered plane could then fly the 107 migrants to Spain.
Spanish Deputy Prime Minister Carmen Calvo said the government had offered to help the Open Arms with food, fuel and medical attention.
"We believe that once the migrants have peace of mind and know that they will navigate to a safe and open port, like the one Spain is offering, this situation will calm down," she said. "But the answer was that they (Open Arms) insist on entering Italy."
Explaining the group's refusal, Camps said: "We could have done it on Day 1 or 2, but not on Day 18 when we have exhausted our resources". He described conditions on the ship as "inhuman."
Last week, 40 migrants and some family members were allowed to leave Open Arms because they were deemed to be minors, ailing or psychologically troubled.
Meanwhile, the Norwegian-flagged Ocean Viking, which is operated by two French humanitarian groups and has 356 rescued migrants aboard, has been sailing between Malta and the Italian island of Linosa as it waits for a port of safety to be assigned.
Australian Associated Press