Police have been called to an unfolding incident at a Darwin immigration detention centre on Wednesday afternoon.
Up to 50 detainees have allegedly broken down a fence between a camp section of the Wickham Point facility and an interview area where some detainees are being held, a source inside the centre has told Guardian Australia.
The group then sat on the ground in protest against impending transfers of at least two families to Nauru, he said, including a pregnant woman who allegedly attempted to take her own life on Tuesday.
The ABC has obtained a video apparently taken inside the detention centre showing the disturbances.
Ben Pynt, spokesman for a Darwin advocacy group, cited his own sources and claimed fights were also breaking out and doors kicked in.
A police spokesman confirmed officers were called and both members of the metropolitan patrol group (MPG) and the dog squad were on site and assisting, but any further information would have to come from the immigration department.
The department of immigration directed Guardian Australia to tweets which refuted some media reports of a “riot” and stated: “a disturbance occurred involving detainees that resulted in minor property damage. Police are attending the facility in accordance with normal operating procedure.”
There have been spate of self-harm incidents and alleged suicide attempts in recent weeks.
On Tuesday afternoon a woman who is five-months pregnant allegedly tried to take her own life but another detainee intervened, Guardian Australia was told.
Three others also attempted self harm, and an older Iranian woman suffered a heart attack later that afternoon.
The older woman was taken to hospital and the other three were taken to medical support rooms inside the centre where they were kept under guard overnight, according to both Pynt and a source inside the detention centre.
The immigration department did not provide confirmation of any information.
The detention centre source has since said the pregnant woman and her husband were separated from other detainees in an interview room ahead of a possible transfer to Nauru on Wednesday night or Thursday morning.
It is this area that the detainees are allegedly trying to get to through the fence.
“The people are so angry and they are trying to break the fences and help them,” he said.
He said the families “are afraid of rape and abuse in Nauru”.
The Moss report released last month detailed credible evidence of physical and sexual abuse of asylum seekers – including of children – at the Australian run detention facility on Nauru.
A message obtained by Guardian Australia and purported to be from the husband of the pregnant woman, said his wife suffers depression.
“Her doctor said and wrote that she has to leave detention and must go to community but nobody care about her situation. Unfortunately today she [tried to take her own life], if my friends [did] not come and help her she was die.”
According to Pynt there have now been 19 self-harm incidents inside the centre in the past three weeks, and he said they were often sparked by impending transfers of detainees to Nauru.
“On the Thursday afternoon people are really beside themselves,” he told ABC on Monday. “Last week I was in there on a Thursday and people that I visited told me that nobody had slept on the Wednesday night because everyone was scared that they would be next.”
Pynt called for the immigration department to give people notice if they were going to be transferred in order to relieve some anxiety.
It was revealed on Wednesday the Australian government has chartered a plane to move the first group of refugees from Nauru to Cambodia within days, according to sources on the island.
