Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations - 20th of August 2015

Case name: 2015_08_20-AEG48
Situation: One vessel in distress near Kos Island presumably rescued; disoriented group on Lesvos Island made their way to Mytilene
Status of WTM Investigations: Concluded
Place of Incidents: Aegean Sea

Summary of the case: On Thursday the 20th of August 2015, the Alarm Phone learned about a possible distress situation, involving a group of about 50 people, including many children, on a vessel in the Aegean Sea, between Turkey and the Greek island of Kos. It was not clear, however, whether this case had already been resolved or not as the information from our contact person related to a situation several hours earlier. When the group of travellers could not be reached we contacted the Greek coastguards at approximately 8am who informed us that they had been alerted to about twenty vessels in the Aegean Sea during the night. They were still in the process of rescuing some of them. After forwarding the GPS coordinates of the vessel in question, the coastguards stated that they had rescued a vessel with 41 travellers in this area. We were not able to reach the group also afterwards so that we hope that they were indeed rescued.

In the evening, at approximately 9.25pm, we were contacted by Nawal Soufi’s activist collective and alerted to a group of people who, already on Lesvos Island, were disoriented and needed support. They were 39 people, plus 12 children and 2 elderly, with one in urgent need of medical care. They had already informed the coastguards and police themselves but nobody had come by. We advised them via WhatsApp to slowly move toward Skala Sikamineas where other groups were already waiting to be transferred by volunteers to Mytilene the next day. Hours later, at 1.10am, they informed us that they were still walking but very tired and without food and water. They told us that now they were about 100 people. Afterwards, they could not be reached again via WhatsApp until the following day when they said that they were moving toward Mytilene. However, contact broke off again for many hours. We were then finally informed that they had found support and were waiting for the bust to bring them to Mytilene.