THE fate of an NGO ship adrift at sea with 150 rescued refugees on board remains uncertain after three nights in the Mediterranean with no place to go. 

The Alan Kurdi, a ship operated by German charity Sea Eye, saved the refugees — including children and a pregnant woman — from near certain death on Monday in two operations after being alerted to wooden boats off the coast of war-torn Libya by the activist network Alarm Phone. 

During the first rescue, gunships from the EU-trained Libyan coastal security forces — a separate entity to the coastguard but with overlapping responsibilities — endangered the refugees and the Alan Kurdi’s crew by firing their weapons and circling around them at high speeds.