09/04: 51 travellers departed from Sfax, fate unclear

10.04.2024 / 02:57 / Central Mediterranean

Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 9th of April 2024
Case name: 2024_04_09-CM095
Situation: 51 travellers departed from Sfax, fate unclear
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Central Mediterranean Sea

Summary of the Case: Around midday of the 9th of April 2024, a relative alerted the Alarmphone shift team to a boat in distress in the Central Mediterranean. The boat had started in the evening of the 8th of April from Sfax in Tunisia. There were 51 people – including 11 women and 3 children - travelling on a 9 meter iron boat. The shift team did not manage to reach the travellers but immediately relayed all the information to the Italian, Maltese and Tunisian authorities. For the next days the shift team continued to try to reach the people on the boat but never managed. The authorities refused to give information. To this day, the fate of these people remains unclear.

Credibility:

Border police patrols
While the exact location of patrols is of course constantly changing, this line indicates the approximate boundary routinely patrolled by border guards’ naval assets. In the open sea, it usually correspond to the outer extent of the contiguous zone, the area in which “State may exercise the control necessary to prevent infringement of its customs, fiscal, immigration or sanitary laws” (UNCLOS, art. 33). Data source: interviews with border police officials.
Coastal radars
Approximate radar beam range covered by coastal radars operating in the frame of national marine traffic monitoring systems. The actual beam depends from several different parameters (including the type of object to be detected). Data source: Finmeccanica.
Exclusive Economic Zone
Maritime area beyond and adjacent to the territorial sea in which the coastal state exercises sovereign rights for the purposes of exploring and exploiting, conserving and managing the natural resources, whether living or non-living, the seabed and its subsoil and the superjacent waters. Its breadth is 200 nautical miles from the straight baselines from which the territorial sea is measured (UNCLOS, Arts. 55, 56 and 57). Data source: Juan Luis Suárez de Vivero, Atlas of the European Seas and Oceans
Frontex operations
Frontex has, in the past few years, carried out several sea operations at the maritime borders of the EU. The blue shapes indicate the approximate extend of these operations. Data source: Migreurop Altas.
Mobile phone coverage
Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) network coverage. Data source: Collins Mobile Coverage.
Oil and gas platforms
Oil and gas platforms in the Mediterranean. Data source:
Search and Rescue Zone
An area of defined dimensions within which a given state is has the responsibility to co-ordinate Search and Rescue operations, i.e. the search for, and provision of aid to, persons, ships or other craft which are, or are feared to be, in distress or imminent danger. Data source: IMO availability of search and rescue (SAR) services - SAR.8/Circ.3, 17 June 2011.
Territorial Waters
A belt of sea (usually extending up to 12 nautical miles) upon which the sovereignty of a coastal State extends (UNCLOS, Art. 2). Data source: Juan Luis Suárez de Vivero, Atlas of the European Seas and Oceans