Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 30th of September 2017

Case name: 2017_09_30-WM164
Situation: 7 persons left from Tanger Med, 6 rescued by Marine Royale, 1 died on board
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Western Mediterranean Sea

Summary of the Case: On Saturday the 30th of September 2017 at 10.25am, a contact person informed the Alarm Phone about 7 people in distress at sea, who had departed two hours earlier from the beach in Tanger Med/Morocco in the direction of Spain. He provided us with a phone number and suggested that they might still be close to the Moroccan coast. At 10.38am, we reached the travellers via phone and they told us that water was entering their boat and that they could barely move, being only equipped with paddles. They immediately asked for helped and we asked several times if we should also call the Moroccan Marine Royale. They said yes, because they were very much afraid to die. After another conversation with the contact person, we decided to call the Moroccan Marine Royal at 11am, who promised to send a rescue boat. At 11.20am, the contact person confirmed to us that he saw a Search and Rescue vessel leaving the port of Tanger. At 11.25am, we called the travellers again and informed them that a rescue vessel was on its way to them. Afterwards, we were not able to reach them anymore. Thus, at about noon, we wrote an email to the Spanish rescue organization Salvamento Maritimo and to the UNHCR Spain, alerting and providing them with all the information we had received so far. At 1.15pm, the contact person informed us that he had heard from other persons that the Moroccan Marine Royale had rescued the travellers. In order to verify this information, we called the Marine Royale at 2pm and they confirmed to us that the travellers from this boat had indeed been rescued. However, later on, our contact person spoke to the travellers and was told that one person died on the boat and that his lifleless body had fallen into the water during the ongoing rescue operation of the Moroccan Marine Royale. The dead person was left behind in the sea.