AROUND 50 people are missing after a migrant boat overturned some 60 miles south of El Hierro, one of Spain’s Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean, Spanish media reported.
The national marine rescue service said one of its helicopters rescued nine people who were found clinging to the boat on Monday morning following a warning call from a merchant vessel in the area.
State news agency Efe said that once transferred to El Hierro airport, the rescued migrants reported that 60 of them had set sail nine days ago and that the open-topped wooden boat ran into problems on Saturday.
The rescue service was unable to say how many people may have been on the boat and no one was available to comment at Civil Guard police offices in the Canary Island capital of Santa Cruz de Tenerife.
READ MORE: Five people including child die while crossing English Channel
Efe said the people were of sub-Saharan origin.
There were no details on which country they had sailed from.
Tens of thousands of migrants from sub-Saharan countries fleeing poverty, conflict, and instability in West Africa try to reach Spain each year by boat.
Most go in large open vessels to the Canary Islands in the Atlantic, while others from Morocco, Algeria, and Middle Eastern countries try to cross the Mediterranean Sea and Atlantic Ocean to mainland Spain.
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Several thousand die making the hazardous journey.
The Interior Ministry says 16,621 migrants arrived in Spain by boat between January 1 and April 15, up by 11,681 in the same period last year.
The vast majority arrived on the Canary Island route.
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