Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 1st September 2021

Case name: 2021_09_01-CM557

Situation: Alarm Phone alerted to 25 travellers in distress in the Central Med, after days we were not able to establish exactly what happened to the boat.

Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded

Place of Incident: Central Mediterranean

Summary of the case: On Wednesday the 1st of September the Alarm Phone shift team was alerted by relatives to a boat carrying 25 travellers, many of them minors, in distress in the Central Mediterranean Sea. The travellers had left around three days previously from around Sfax, Tunisia. At 12.13 CEST we called the Tunisian coastguard who told us that they had not rescued any boats corresponding to our information, but that they were looking for the boat in question. We later called the Italian coastguard who refused to give us any information.

We were never able to establish exactly what happened to the travellers, as we received contradicting informations. One traveller we later spoke to told us that the Italian coastguard had arrived at which point the men had jumped in the water to be rescued. As it was dark, they did not know what happened to the men, but informed us that the women had been taken back to Tunisia. However, a relative of two of the other travellers told us that they had arrived to Lampedusa, something we were not able to verify with local authorities. We are still trying to figure out exactly what happened to the boat and will update this report if we have more information.