SEASICK kids on board a charity’s refugee rescue ship now being tossed around in the central Mediterranean are struggling to keep their food down.

SOS Mediterranee’s ship the Ocean Viking is now carrying 373 refugees rescued from four boats in international waters off the coast of Libya over the weekend.

Among the rescued are 21 babies, 35 children and 131 unaccompanied minors.

“The children are the ones who suffer most, who can’t keep their food down, who can’t keep the liquids in,” communication officer Julia Schaefermeyer told the Star from the ship today.

“We've got a five-year-old boy under observation in the medical module,” she said. “The weather is looking really bad ... We’re just trying to hold a course and keep the ship in a position where it is as stable as possible. But it is extremely difficult.

“The 373 people we have on board are remarkable people, each with a remarkable story, some of which are extremely hard to hear.

“But they all deserve the same rights that apply to everyone: the right to disembark in a place of safety after being rescued from distress at sea.

“We are urgently waiting a place of safety.”

Three pregnant women remain on board the ship; another heavily pregnant woman was evacuated on Saturday by Italian coastguards.

“Two requests for a place of safety were sent to the Libyan maritime authorities,” the non-governmental organisation said. “In the absence of an answer, we [have] requested support [from the] Maltese and Italian maritime authorities.”

The Ocean Viking, which was south of the Italian island of Sicily and west of Malta by the time the Star went to press last night, was still waiting for Rome and Valletta to respond.

About 250 more refugees attempted to make the crossing from Libya to Europe at the weekend in three boats, according to Alarm Phone, an activist network that runs a hotline for refugees in distress at sea.

Relatives of people on one of the boats, believed to be carrying about 145 people, contacted Alarm Phone on Saturday to say that that they had managed to make it back to the Libyan shore.

The two other boats — one with roughly 45 aboard, the other with about 55 — are still unaccounted for.

“The sea off the coast of Libya is endangering lives, but the so-called Libyan coastguards don’t want to go out as, for them, the sea is too rough. The European coastguards [are not fulfilling] their responsibility either,” Alarm Phone said on Saturday.

Frontex, the European border & coastguard agency, has yet to respond to the Star’s questions after activists spotted one of its chartered planes last Wednesday circulating above a Libyan coastguard vessel as it was in the process of returning 48 people back to the war-torn country.