Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 27th June 2021
Case name: 2021_06_27-WM636
Situation: Alarm Phone alerted to a group of 46 people in distress in the Atlantic; so far we have no news about their fate.
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Western Mediterranean

Summary
On Sunday the 27th late in the evening the Alarm Phone shift team was alerted by a relative to a group of 46 people in distress in the Atlantic sea. The group consisted of 22 women, of which one was pregnant, 19 men, and five children. The relative had last heard from their sister at 14.00 CEST the same day, and had since not been able to reach her. The group had departed from a beach close to Dakhla two days previously, on the 25th of June at 05.00 CEST. Despite many tries we never managed to reach the travellers. We called the Spanish search and rescue organisation Salvamento Maritimo and alerted them to the distress of the travellers. They informed us about their recent rescues but were not able to match this boat with any of those they had assisted. In addition we forwarded all the information we had via email. On Monday afternoon we called Salvamento Maritimo again who informed us that the boat had supposedly gotten rescued by the Moroccan navy. We called the Spanish police, Guardia Civil, who were not able to give us any information about the case, and informed us that they still considered the case to be open. At 16.20 CEST we called the Moroccan rescue coordination centre in Rabat who told us that one of their patrol boats was heading towards the area where the travellers were expected to be in distress. Later, at 20.50 CEST, the Moroccan authorities informed us that they had searched the area without finding the boat in question. We then called Salvamento Maritimo again and were told that no boats had arrived to the Canary Islands that afternoon. The following evening we spoke again to the Moroccan rescue authorities who informed us that they had not rescued any boats that day. At 23.47 CEST we tweeted:
SOS! Boat missing along #Canary route!

Alarm Phone was alerted to a boat that left #Dakhla on 25 June with 46 people on board, including 22 women, one of them pregnant, and 5 children. The authorities have been alerted but there is still no news of them. Where are they?

The next morning we once again spoke to the Guardia Civil who still could not match our information with any boats arriving.
Some hours later we sent the relevant authorities an email with the name of one of the travellers in the hope that that would help identify the boat. In the meantime, we were also not able to find any matching information about rescues in Spanish media and social media.
The following days we spoke to Salvamento Maritimo both in the morning and the evening. They informed us that they were looking for boats with one of their aircrafts but without that leading to any rescues. Unfortunately, we have still not been able to establish what happened to this group of travellers. We continue our research and will update this report if we have news.