47 people escaping from Zuwarah/Libya call Alarm Phone – rescued by Sea-Watch!
This morning, the 19th of January 2019, the Alarm Phone was alerted to a boat in distress off the coast of Libya. The 47 people had left from Zuwarah before reaching out to us. After a while, they were able to send us their GPS position so that we were able to localise them. They also informed us that their engine had stopped working and requested urgent assistance. We alerted the Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre in Rome and the civil reconnaissance aircraft Moonbird and the Sea-Watch 3, the latter patrolling in the vicinity. At that point in time, Sea-Watch 3 was already engaged in a rescue about which we learned later that this was the case of the people who had contacted us.
They are all safe on board of Sea-Watch 3 now, looking for a harbour in Europe to disembark. We are happy and relieved that they were found and rescued on the day we learned about the large-scale shipwreck in the same region of the Mediterranean – presumably leading to the loss of 117 lives.