Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations - 3rd of August 2015

Case name: 2015_08_03-AEG31
Situation: Alarm Phone alerted to a group in distress on a Turkish island and one near the Greek island of Kos
Status of WTM Investigations: Concluded (but investigation on attack ongoing)
Place of Incidents: Aegean Sea, Greece

Summary of the Cases: On Monday the 3rd of August 2015, only minutes passed midnight, the Alarm Phone was contacted by Nawal Soufi’s activist collective and informed about a group of travellers stranded on the Turkish island of Gökçeada. While the information about the situation were limited, we learned that they had run out of food and water 2 days earlier and that at least two of them urgently needed medical care. We then contacted the Turkish coastguards and the UNHCR. At around 9.38am, we contacted the Turkish coastguard again and received the confirmation that they would launch a search and rescue mission for them. A few hours later, the Turkish coastguard stated that they had informed the local authorities on Gökçeada who had already found 16 people and were searching for more people in the area.

At about 4am on the same day, the activist collective told us about a second case, this time somewhere between the Turkish coast and the Greek island of Kos. We reached out to the travellers and they reported that there were between 50 and 60 Syrian refugees on a vessel, including 16 children and 10 women. They said that they were ok and would reach Kos shortly. They also told us about a second refugee vessel that had encountered a police or military vessel that towed them somewhere. They were not certain what had occurred to the second vessel and were worried about its passengers. At about 4.50am, they told us that they had reached Kos and were well. We passed on contact numbers to the Greek UNHCR and the info-guide of w2eu for Greece (source 1).