Helpers were looking for 12 migrants missing at sea in southern Spain on Sunday after their boat capsized during an attempt to cross from Algeria, the Spanish coast guard said.
A rescue operation was launched after a Norwegian sailboat announced that it had picked up an Algerian migrant a few nautical miles from the coast of Spain's Almeria province, a coast guard spokesman said.
A helicopter sent to the area spotted another migrant at sea and rescued him, according to the same source.
The two migrants told the rescue team that they embarked with 12 other people from a beach near Oran in northwest Algeria last week, but that after an engine failure the boat capsized on Sunday. morning.
The sinking comes after another boat carrying migrants capsized on Thursday west of Cape Trafalgar.
Two men were found alive on board the boat, and a woman was rescued after she fell into the sea. The bodies of nine people were found, but 16 others are missing.
Separately, a man was found dead in a boat carrying 44 other migrants, which, after a week at sea, arrived on Sunday in Gran Canaria, one of the islands of the Canary archipelago, the coast guard said. Spanish.
A rescue operation was launched after the ship was spotted approaching the beach of Anfi del Mar, in the south of the island, said a spokeswoman for the coast guard.
The 44 migrants in the boat - all men including minors, and from the Maghreb - received medical treatment, before being taken to the nearby port of Arguineguin for examination, she added.
The boat would have left Morocco.
The coast guard also rescued 16 ships off the Balearic Islands on Sunday, sheltering 203 people, including 8 women, said the delegation of the Spanish government in the archipelago.
Spain is one of the main gateways to Europe for migrants departing from North Africa.
More than 27,000 migrants arrived by sea in Spain, in the Balearic or Canary Islands, between January and the end of September, or 54% more than in 2020, over the same period, according to figures from the Ministry of the Interior.
This sea route is strewn with pitfalls: at least 1,025 people died during the crossing in 2021, which has already become “the deadliest year on the migratory route to Spain”, according to the International Organization for migration.
