Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 3rd of July 2018

Case name: 2018_07_03-AEG404
Situation: Two groups of travellers in need of assistance at the Turkish-Greek landborder
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded

Place of Incident: Aegean Sea

Summary of the Cases: On Tuesday, 3rd of June, the Alarm Phone was alerted to two cases at the Turkish-Greek landborder.

At around 4pm we received a call from the Turkish-Greek border zone by a group of 10 travellers, asking for assistance. They were stuck close to the Greek village of Peplos. One of them was in need of medical treatment as he was suffering from hepatitis. They sent their GPS position. At 4:28pm CEST we called the local police station of Alexandropolis and requested assistance. We also sent an email to the local authorities to document the alert.
At 5:03pm we called the group and informed them that we alerted the local authorities. At 5:09pm we called the police in Peplos directly, but couldn’t reach anyone. At 5:27pm we called the main police station in Alexandropolis again, but they couldn’t provide us any news and referred us to the police headquarter. None of the phone numbers that were passed on to us worked. At 5:56pm we sent an Email to UNHCR Athens and informed them about the situation of the group and the medical urgency. In the ongoing, we called several times in Alexandropolis, but couldn’t get any new information on the status of the police operation. We couldn’t establish a connection to the group anymore neither. We tried to reach local authorities throughout the night, but only at 4:07am we reached the Evros Centre for Integrated Border Management that registered our information and also requested to send the details via Email, which we did at 4:15am. At 4:48am the Centre replied, shifting the responsibility to Alexandropolis police. During the next hour, we continuously tried to reach local authorities and the travellers. At 5:36am we reached the police in the nearby village of Peplos, who registered the information and promised to send a patrol in order to assist the people. We didn’t manage to reach Peplos police after that any more. At 8:30am we alerted the police in Feres that also took the information. We still couldn’t get in contact with the group itself. Until 2pm we couldn’t reach or alert any other authority and didn’t get new information. At 2:21pm we reached Feres police that informed us that the patrol had not found anyone at the given location. As we could not reach the people anymore to check if they had moved and our last contact tot hem had been the night before, we decided to close the case.


At around 9pm CEST we were alerted to a second group consisting of 11 people that were close to Praggi on the Greek side of Evros river. We couldn‘t establish a proper communication to the group, but the contact person informed us that the travellers had decided to wait until next morning before requesting assistance from the local authorities. In the morning we reached them directly. They were in need of medical assistance,food and water. Only at 11am we managed to reach them again. We asked them to call 112 and sent us a list of their names. At 2:25pm we received a new position and phone number of the group via the contact person. At 4pm the group requested us to inform the police. At 4:04pm we called the police in Didimoteicho, the closest town. The police referred us to the Police in Petrades. At 4:13pm we reached the police in Petrades and passed our information. At 5pm we tried to reach UNHCR Athens but couldn’t establish a connection. At 5:25pm we called the police in Petrades again. They didn’t have news yet. At 6:45pm we sent an Email with all information regarding the case to the Greek police and UNHCR. We still couldn’t establish a connection to the travellers. Via the contact person we received a new position at 7:20pm. At 7:35pm the police in Petrades informed us that they didn’t find the people and we passed on the updated position. The police promised to send assistance to the people. At 8:18pm the contact person informed us that the group had decided not to wait for assistance. We decided to close the case.