Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 7th January 2021
Case name: 2021_01_07-CM342
Situation: 11 people heading towards Sardinia brought back to Algeria by the Algerian Navy.
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Central Mediterranean

Summary of cases: On Thursday the 7th of January 2021 at 19.52 CET the Alarm Phone shift team was called by a relative alerting us to a boat carrying 11 people in distress. The travellers had left from Annaba, Algeria, on the 5th of January at 10.00 on a wooden boat and were heading towards Cagliari, Sardinia. The relative told us that the Algerian coastguard did not have news about the travellers. Communication was complicated by issues with the connection, and it therefore took a while to obtain all relevant information. At 21.53 we called the coastguard on Sardinia and alerted them to the distress of the travellers. They told us that no travellers had arrived in the past 24 hours to Sardinia. We then called the Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre (MRCC) in Rome and passed on the information we had to them as well, both via phone and email. At 00.07 we called the Sardinian coastguard again, but they refused to give us any information about ongoing search and rescue efforts. We also tried contacting the Algerian coastguards but were not able to establish communication with them, so at 01.17 we forwarded them the information we had via email. As the weather was getting worse, we remained in contact with relatives who were getting increasingly worried. The following morning we called the Italian coastguard again, but they were still not willing to give us any information. At 12.20 the relative told us that a boat had been rescued by the Algerian Navy and at 14.14 they could confirm that the rescued boat was the one with their relatives on and that they were all safely back in Algeria.