Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 27th of September 2015

Case name: 2015_09_27-CM46
Situation: 112 travellers rescued by Doctors without Borders in the Central Mediterranean Sea
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Central Mediterranean Sea

Summary of the Cases: On Sunday, the 27th of September 2015, the Alarm Phone was alerted to one distress case in the Central Mediterranean. At 5.25am, the shift team received an e-mail from father Mussie Zerai about a boat carrying approximately 120 persons, including 15 children and 20 women. They had left from Libya five hours earlier. Father Zerai also sent us a Thuraya phone number of people on the boat, but no coordinates. We called the travellers and they sent us their coordinates via SMS. At 6am we called the Italian coastguard about the case. Throughout the next two hours, we kept contact with the travellers and repeatedly forwarded updated coordinates to the coastguard. At 7.25am, the travellers told us that they saw a big boat coming toward them. A few minutes later, the Italian coastguard informed us that the boat Bourbon Argos of Doctors without Borders was close to the vessel in distress and about to conduct a rescue operation. We passed on the good news to father Mussie Zerai. On Sunday evening, at 6.25pm we read in a press release of the Italian coastguard that 795 travellers had been rescued in the course of the day in seven different rescue operations. The ships Bourbon Argos and Ship Dignity I of Doctors without Borders had rescued respectively 112 and 107 migrants, according to the press statement.