Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 19th February 2021

Case name: 2021_02_19-CM367
Situation: 90 travellers from Al Khoms in Maltese SAR zone, fate unknown. 
Status of WTM Investigation: Unconfirmed
Place of Incident: Central Mediterranean Sea

Summary of the Case:
In the early afternoon of Friday the 19th of February, the Alarm Phone was called by a boat in distress carrying 90 travellers. The rubber boat had departed in the early morning of the 17th of February from Al Khoms and was heading towards Malta. According to the GPS position that the travellers passed on to us, the boat was in the Maltese Search and Rescue zone. The travellers had been at sea for almost 3 days and were desperately asking for help. At 15:55h CET our shift team alerted the authorities by email. We tried to call several times the Maltese coastguard but no one answered our calls. At 16:40h we published a tweet informing about this case. Unfortunately during the rest of the afternoon we were no longer able to establish contact with the travellers. The following morning, we again tried to speak to the Maltese coastguard but no one answered our calls, the travellers were also still unreachable during the whole day. In the evening, we managed to speak to the so-called Libyan coastguard who told us that they had “rescued” more than 5 rubber boats that day but did not give us any further details that could help us understand if it included “our” case. As we were unable to find any further information we finally closed the case as “fate unknown”. 

Tweets:

19/02
16:40 https://mobile.twitter.com/alarm_phone/status/1362786208330502148 
22:08 https://mobile.twitter.com/alarm_phone/status/1362871595409289220
 
20/02 
20:29 https://mobile.twitter.com/alarm_phone/status/1363209260549693442