Families at the centre of protests inside a Darwin detention centre have been transferred to Nauru in the early hours of Saturday morning, advocates and detainees say.
The reports of the transfer follow a week which saw dozens of people protest inside the Wickham Point facility, and numerous instances of self harm and alleged suicide attempts.
Spokesman for the Darwin asylum seeker support and advocacy network (Dassan), Ben Pynt told Guardian Australia that after protests began for the second time on Thursday transfers to Nauru were cancelled. People who had been separated were returned to their usual accommodation in the family compound at Wickham Point, a claim also made by a detention centre source.
However on Saturday morning they told Guardian Australia several people including families with at least one three-month-old baby were put on a flight out sometime after 5am.
It’s not known how many people may have been transferred out of Darwin, but a flight from Brisbane to Nauru left at 7am.
The centre had been on lockdown on Friday night, Guardian Australia was told. Guards were not allowing anyone to leave their rooms, which has not been the case during the past year at least.
One person reported hearing a woman screaming and items being smashed somewhere in the centre in the early hours of Saturday morning.
The immigration department did not respond to a request for comment.
An NT police spokesman told Guardian Australia: “police assisted in an operation out there, but the nature of the operation or what it was all about needs to come from the immigration department.”
He could not confirm whether the assistance related to further protests or not. Police media have been previously able to confirm details about call outs to the protests.
Northern Territory police had been called out to respond to unrest at the centre over recent days, including the first protest on Wednesday, in which an internal fence was allegedly broken down so detainees could stage a sit in.
The protesters were demonstrating against what they believed were imminent transfers of families to Nauru, including a woman who is five months pregnant. Some detainees had been separated into rooms at the centre, which is widely considered a sign of a transfer in the next day or two.
The department of immigration said there was never a scheduled transfer of a pregnant woman from the centre.
Thursday’s incident included a number of people allegedly on a roof at Wickham Point, a claim dismissed by a spokeswoman for immigration minister Peter Dutton as “mischievous and inaccurate claims made by advocates and detainees” in a statement to the ABC.
A spokeswoman for NT police told Guardian Australia that police attended Wickham Point on Thursday at the request of security engaged by the department of immigration.
She said the “disturbance at location was not to a level that required a handover to police, so police left at approx 6pm”.
