Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 7th of December 2015

Case name: 2015_12_7-WM70
Situation: Alarm Phone alerted to deadly shipwreck in Western Med, 11 bodies found
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Western Mediterranean Sea

Summary of the Case: On Monday the 7th of December 2015 at 10pm the Alarm Phone received a call from a Moroccan phone number, asking us if we have any information about a boat that had left from Laâyoune in the Western Sahara at 4am in the morning, with 39 travellers on board. As we were not informed about this boat we could not provide the contact person with further information. However, at 11.45pm we called the Spanish rescue organization Salvamento Maritimo (S.M.), who were aware of this boat and had already started a search and rescue operation. As they did not have further information they asked us to call back on the next day. At 11.55pm we talked again to the person who has called us at 10pm. He told us that he, too, was only alerted to this boat by a friend and does not know more. We informed him that we had talked with the Spanish rescue organization and that they had started to search for the boat. He was very relieved. At 6.40am of the next we called Salvamento Maritimo’s headquarter again and learned that they were still looking for the boat and had no new information. At 8am we also sent an e-mail to them and they responded and confirmed that they were looking for the boat with an aircraft since the day before. At 1pm we received the information that 11 bodies had been found at the Moroccan coast. We talked with Salvamento Martimo and they had received the same unconfirmed information. We were told that they are in contact with the Moroccan authorities and that they are still searching the boat with an aircraft. At 4pm and 6.30pm we talked with S.M. again and in the second call they confirmed that the Moroccan coastguard had found 11 bodies at a beach near Laâyoune. S.M. had stopped its search and rescue operation for this day, but promised to continue it on the next day. At 6.30pm the first media reports on a shipwreck and on the 11 bodies found were published (source 1 + 2). At 6.50pm we forwarded this information to S.M. At 8pm it was reported that 23 travellers had survived the shipwreck of a boat with 39 travellers, thus 16 people are supposed to be dead (source 3).