Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 5th of October 2018
Case name: 2018_10_05CM138
Situation: 40 travellers on their way to Italy, intercepted from international waters after being spotted by Colibri
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Central Mediterranean Sea

Summary of the Case: On Friday the 5th of October at 11.49am, the Alarm Phone shift team received a direct call from a rubber boat which had left from Al Khums at around 2am. On the boat were around 40 travellers, including three children and five women, of which one was pregnant. The call was interrupted before we could obtain much information about the situation of the travellers, but we immediately sent them a text explaining how to send us their position. Afterwards we were not able to reach the travellers for a while, but by monitoring their credit we could see that they were in contact with others. At 3.35pm the travellers called us again and managed to give us their position. In a phone call to the travellers an hour later, we could hear a plane I the background, and soon after we learned that the civil aircraft Colibri had spotted the boat, which was now in international waters, though still inside the so-called Libyan search and rescue zone. Civil rescue vessels, as well as the Italian coast guard and a close by merchant vessel had been made aware of the distress situation. At 5.22pm the travellers told us that they had run out of fuel and were thus left drifting. At 5.46pm we received an updated position from the travellers, but after this point we were no longer able to reach them. At 11.44pm we received a confirmation that the travellers had been intercepted by the Libyan “coast guard” and brought back to Libya.