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“We had to do something”: 10 years on the Med’s rescue hotline

After a decade running one of the busiest lines for people in distress at sea, Alarm Phone is needed more than ever

By Frey Lindsay
“We had to do something”: 10 years on the Med’s rescue hotline
A woman looks at her phone after landing on the Greek island of Kos in 2015 | Angelos Tzortzinis/AFP/Getty Images. All rights reserved
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One night in December 2022, Alarm Phone received a call. The person on the other end of the line said they were one of around 100 people crammed onto a small inflatable motorboat in the Mediterranean, around 160 kilometres North of Tripoli. They were in trouble.

Several hours later, the Ocean Viking, a vessel operated by SOS Méditerranée, rescued 113 people based on Alarm Phone’s information.

“We are thanking you very much. And we are feeling happy,” said one survivor, a woman from Senegal.

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Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0