Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations - 30th of July 2015

Case name: 2015_07_30-AEG28
Situation: Groups in distress on Symi and Lesvos Island, found and rescued
Status of WTM Investigations: Concluded
Place of Incidents: Aegean Sea, Greece

Summary of the Cases: On Thursday the 30th of July 2015, at about 2pm, Nawal Soufi’s activist collective informed the Alarm Phone about a group of about 50 people, including many children, lost on Symi Island/Greece and in need of support and rescue. They passed on GPS coordinates and a phone number of the travellers who, however, could not be reached. Our shift team then informed both the Port Authority on Symi as well as the UNHCR in Greece. The Port Authority confirmed that there was a vessel already searching for the group on land. At about 4.30pm, they confirmed that they had just brought 30 people of the group to the Symi Port Police Station and they would go again to transfer the remaining 32 to the station as well. They stated that the group, totalling 62 and not 50 people, would stay at the station until the day after.

In the afternoon, at approximately 5.30pm, our shift team was contacted by someone in Sweden who informed the shift team that a vessel carrying families with children had arrived somewhere in the south of Lesvos Island. They were disoriented and without food and water. Following his account, the travellers had seen vessels that appeared like police or military assets which, however, had not come to their aid. Hours later the contact person informed us that the group had been found and rescued.