Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 28th of November 2017

Case name: 2017_11_28-WM189
Situation: 34 travellers in distress, 28 missing, 6 back in Morocco
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded

Place of Incident: Western Mediterranean

Summary of the Case:

On Thursday, 28th of November, at 8:28pm, we got alerted to a motor boat in distress carrying 34 people, among them 29 men, 4 women and a 5-year old child. The boat had left from Assilah at 5am. We didn’t have a number of the boat and tried to get more information via the contact person.
At 9:28 we called the Spanish rescue authority Salvamento Maritimo in Tarifa. They stated to have searched the whole day for that boat and that they would continue searching.
The next day at 8:10am we called Salvamento again. They had not found the boat, but a rescue boat, navy boats and a helicopter were still searching in the area.
At 8:44am we received the phone number of the boat from the contact person, but the phone was not reachable. At 9:14am we passed the number to Salvamento.
We continuously tried to call the boat, but it remained unreachable. During the next hours we called Salvamento several times and tried to reach the boat. Our contact person did not have news neither. At 6:08pm Salvamento confirmed that they would still search for the boat.
The following day at 09:53 we received information from the contact person that only 6 travellers of the boat had survived. They had managed to reach Moroccan shores with their own forces and were in hospital by then. At 1:36pm we called Salvamento Tarifa, they also had the information that only six people had arrived in Morocco. The remaining 28 people are still missing.