Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 13th of December 2017

Case name: 2017_12_13-WM198
Situation: Alarm Phone alerted to emergency situation in the Western Med
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Western Mediterranean Sea

Summary of the Case: On Wednesday the 13th of December 2017, at 5.10pm, our Alarm Phone shift team was informed by a contact person in Morocco to a boat that had left at 5am, carrying 35 people, including 7 women and 1 child. Our contact person stated that the last time he was able to speak to them, their engine had broken down and their phone might now be out of battery. We were unable to reach the boat directly and contacted Salvamento Maritimo (SM), the Spanish search and rescue organisation. They said that they had received information from the NGO Caminando Fronteras about this case in the morning and were conducting a search operation. At 8.18pm, when we spoke to SM again, they confirmed that one of the several boats that had been rescued, carried 35 people, including 5 women and 1 infant. When we asked our contact person whether this was the boat in question and about the differences in the number of passengers, he stated that it was indeed the boat in question as he had directly spoken to some of the boat-people. He also stated that 3 people had died on the journey. On Twitter, Salvamento Maritimo spoke of 2 people who had gone missing. While we believe that there were fatalities, it is difficult for us to verify whether 2 or more people have lost their lives.