Nationality of baby born on Mediterranean rescue ship in international waters 'under discussion'

A Nigerian woman has given birth on board a rescue ship in the Mediterranean.

Medical charity MSF said because the baby was born in international waters, his nationality was still under debate.

Mother Faith Oqunbor had been suffering contractions when she left Libya and said she was terrified she would give birth in the rubber dinghy.

Faith, her husband Otis and their sons Victory, seven, and Rollres, five, were plucked from the overcrowded boat in the Mediterranean and taken to the MV Aquarius.

Faith said: “I was very stressed on the rubber boat, sitting on the floor of the boat with the other women and children, panicking that I would go into labour."

She added: "I could feel my baby moving. He would move down and then move back up again. I had been having contractions for three days.”

A midwife on board the ship MV Aquarius described the birth as "normal... in dangerously abnormal conditions".

MSF said that the baby's parents, Otas and Faith Oqunbor, had named him Newman Otas.

MSF Midwife Jonquil Nicholl delivered the baby. She said: “I am filled with horror at the thought of what would have happened if this baby had arrived 24 hours earlier; in that unseaworthy rubber boat, with fuel on the bottom where the women sit, crammed in with no space to move, at the mercy of the sea."

Thousands of refugees and migrants risk the perilous crossing from Libya to Europe in search of a better life.

The rescue ship currently has 392 people are on board after two rubber boats were rescued.

Since April, MSF teams have rescued 12,003 people during 89 different rescue operations.