THE ITALIAN coastguards kept about 400 people in distress on nine boats in the central Mediterranean waiting for hours to be saved on Wednesday.

The crew of the MareGo, an activist-run refugee rescue ship, discovered six boats, carrying 285 people in total, off the coast of Tunisia in the morning.

The MareGo was not big enough to accommodate the survivors, and so the crew stabilised the refugee boats and waited for the authorities to assist with the rescue.