Three migrants rescued from the Mediterranean Sea and taken to a Sicilian port but then banned from disembarking, jumped into the sea in despair on Monday, caught in a standoff between charity ships and Italy’s new far-right government.

The men were quickly pulled from the water near the Geo Barents ship when it was docked in Catania with more than 200 people on board, according to operator Doctors Without Borders (MSF).

It is one of a handful of charity ships rescuing migrants at risk of drowning during the perilous crossing from North Africa to Europe, and is now in the crosshairs of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s new government.

Shortly after the men jumped – one apparently trying to save the other two – a dozen other migrants standing on the ship’s deck shouted “Help Us,” an AFP journalist witnessed.

After days at sea, Geo Barents docked in Catania this weekend and Italian authorities allowed 357 people, including children, to disembark while refusing entry to 215 others.

Nearby, the German-flagged rescue ship Humanity 1 has disembarked 144 people but still has 35 adult male migrants on board, who have also been denied permission to go ashore.

A government decree issued on Friday said Humanity 1 could only enter an Italian port for the time needed to help people in “emergencies”.

Italy’s two-week-old government, led by Meloni’s far-right Brothers of Italy party and made up of Matteo Salvini’s anti-immigration league, has vowed to stop the tens of thousands of migrants arriving on the country’s shores each year.

Most come in overcrowded, leaky boats and many die trying to reach Europe. However, Italy has long complained that the EU does not share the burden of tackling the problem.

Salvini, who is currently on trial for blocking migrant boats as interior minister in 2019, said Monday arrivals must be halted.

“It’s organized trips that are becoming more and more dangerous, funding guns and drugs. They must be cut off,” the now deputy prime minister tweeted.

But even as tensions rose in Catania, more than 500 people were rescued by Italian authorities and disembarked in Sicily, the head of Syracuse’s administration told AFP.

One of the 215 remaining on board the Geo Barents was later evacuated by ambulance after suffering from “acute abdominal pain”, MSF said on Monday, bringing the total to 214.

Antonio Nicita, a senator from the centre-left Democratic Party, said he visited the ship and found “a lot of suffering”.

“Many people undressed in front of us to show their scabies infection,” he told AFP news agency.

“Their situation, their level of mental stress is very, very high,” added Riccardo Gatti, MSF’s head of search and rescue.

“The ship has its limitations in terms of medical care: a ship is like an ambulance and people are still in the ambulance,” he said.

The charity SOS Humanity, which operates the Humanity 1 ship, said authorities had decided after a “brief” medical evaluation that the 35 men left on board the ship were “healthy” and therefore did not need to disembark.

But it said no translator was present and there was no psychological examination, and has taken legal action against the Italian authorities.

“It is our government’s duty to provide a safe haven… But there is a new strategy that has been proposed, which is to select those who have the right to disembark,” said SOS Humanity lawyer Riccardo Campochiaro .

“When a port is safe, it’s safe for everyone,” he told AFP.

The ship’s captain, Joachim Ebeling, resisted orders to leave port, telling reporters on Monday: “I’m not going anywhere with these people on board.”

Amnesty International has accused Italy of “breaching its international obligations”: “The law of the sea is clear; a rescue ends when all rescued are disembarked in a safe place.”

In a joint statement on Monday, UN agencies UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency and the International Organization for Migration urged the migrants to be embarked “immediately”.

Two other migrant rescue ships have also asked for a safe haven. The Ocean Viking and Rise Above are still off the coast of Sicily, although media reports say the latter, with around 90 migrants, has been assigned an Italian port.