Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 24th July 2022

Case name: 2022_07_24-ATL075

Situation: 63 travellers in distress in the Atlantic Ocean, their fate remains unknown.

Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded

Place of Incident: Atlantic Sea

Summary of the case: On Sunday the 24th of July 2022 in the late evening, the Alarm Phone shift team was alerted by a relative to a group of 63 travellers, 38 men, eight children and 17 women of which two were pregnant, in distress in the Atlantic Ocean. The travellers had left from Tan Tan at midnight on a dart grey rubber boat, heading towards Lanzarote. We were not able to establish direct contact to the boat which did not have a satellite phone, and the relative told us that their last contact to the travellers had been prior to their departure. However, we relayed all the information we had to the Spanish search and rescue organisation Salvamento Maritimo, urging them to conduct a search and rescue operation.
The travellers remained unreachable throughout the night and the following day. At around midday the Moroccan rescue authorities informed is that they had searched for the boat without result and would continue their search. In the late afternoon Salvamento Maritimo informed us that the boat had been rescued by the Moroccan navy; however, the Moroccan rescue authorities denied that they had carried out a rescue of a boat matching the description we had given.
The following days, the information we got was the same: the Moroccan navy searched for the boat without finding it and Salvamento Maritimo had also not rescued the boat. In the meantime, the travellers remained unreachable. We are still not sure what happened to the boat and our investigation is still ongoing. We hope that they managed to reach land by themselves but fear that they have become part of the devastating number of people losing their lives in search for a future in Europe.

Tweets about the case:

https://twitter.com/alarm_phone/status/1551515991934439425