Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 10th of May 2019

Case name: 2019_05_10-CM158
Situation: 2 boats in Central Mediterranean: 110 people taken to Libya, 82 people picked up by Tunisian Coast Guard, both cases not definitely confirmed
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded

Place of Incident: Central Mediterranean Sea

Summary of the Cases:

On Friday, 10th of May, the Alarm Phone was alerted to two boats in the Central Mediterranean. The first boat with 110 people on board was most probably picked up by the Libyan authorities. The second boat with 82 passengers was reportedly intercepted by the Tunisian Coast Guard. Both rescues could not be directly confirmed by the travellers.

Case 1 : At 4 :32am CEST we were called from a boat in distress that had left from Libya towards Italy, carrying 110 travellers. We couldn’t find out where they had departed from, nor could they provide us their GPS position, and the connection broke soon. At 5 :05am we managed to re-establish the connection. The people on board informed us that 24 women and 8 children were among them, and that their engine had stopped. At 6:20am, we talked again to the travellers, continuously trying to find out their position. They told us that their engine was working again and that water was entering the boat. They also told us that their Thuraya phone would not find their GPS position. We continued to talk to the group, trying to get any hint on their location. At 9:43am the people told us that they had left the shore the night before around 10pm local time, so they had been in the water since about 12 hours already.
At 9:57am, the travellers finally managed to find out their GPS position. We could not reach the so-called Libyan Coast Guard (scLYCG), but we called MRCC Rome at 10:09am to alert the authorities to the distress situation. We also document the alert via email. Until 10:30am, we continuously tried to reach several numbers of the Libyan authorities, but couldn’t get through.
At 11:29am the travellers contacted us again and told us their situation was getting worse. They sent us an updated GPS position. At 11:37am we called MRCC Rome again and passed the new position. The responding officer informed us that he would be in contact with the Libyan authorities on this case, although they had not picked up any of our calls. At 12:25am, the travellers on board reported that bodies were floating in the water around them. At 12:40am we called the Italian authorities again, but they didn’t give us any information on ongoing SAR operations of the Libyan authorities. At 1pm, we finally reached an officer of the scLYCG. He confirmed that the Libyan navy had sent a naval asset to the position of the boat. We sent all relevant information to several email addresses of the scLYCG. Afterwards, we couldn’t reach the boat any more. For the next hour, neither the Libyan officer nor MRCC Rome responded to our calls. At 3:35pm, MRCC Rome stated that the travellers had been rescued by the Libyan authorities. At 4:18pm we sent an email to all regional authorities with the request to confirm the rescue. At 5pm we reached the Libyan commander that told us that the scLYCG conducted a rescue operation and would currently rescue a second boat, but he would not collaborate with us to identify the boats further. At 5 :04pm, MRCC Rome confirmed via email that the boat we had informed them about had been taken charge of by the Libyan navy. At 6 :35pm the Libyan commander informed us that a boat with 101 people on board had been picked up by the Libyan authorities. He didn’t give us any other information. We assume that our boat was the rescued one. We couldn’t establish a connection to the travellers any more to confirm their rescue.


Case 2: At 10pm CEST we were alerted by a relative to a missing boat in the Central Mediterranean that had left the day before from Zuwara, carrying 82 people, among them 4 women and 1 child. We could not establish a connection to the travellers and informed MRCC Rome at 10:50pm. The relative passed us a GPS position of the boat that he had received at 1 :36pm CEST. He informed us that the travellers had called themselves MRCC Malta around 3pm CEST and that they had seen two aircrafts that had probably localized them. The GPS position that the relative had passed us was in Maltese waters. We called RCC Malta at 11:58pm. They could not provide us any information on the boat. We sent an email to the Maltese and Italian authorities concerning the case. At 1 :36am, we called RCC Malta again, but the responding officer said he wouldn’t have any information and the officer on duty would not be available at that moment. We continuously tried to call the travellers, but couldn’t establish a connection. At 7 :40pm, we called the Maltese Coast Guard again. The responding officer told us that the boat had been rescued by the Tunisian navy. We couldn’t confirm this information directly with the travellers.