11 migrants found dead in boat off Spanish coast

Spain's Maritime Rescue Service has found 11 dead migrants in a boat drifting in the Alboran basin east of Gibraltar and rescued more than 30 other passengers.

All of the migrants were from sub-Saharan Africa, a spokeswoman with the service said.

A tweet sent by the Spanish Red Cross said that two women, one of them pregnant, were among those who died.

Rescuers had been looking for the boat about 11 miles south of the city of Almeria for two days, said the Maritime Rescue Service official.

A Spanish navy scientific research vessel found the drifting boat in the area, east of the Strait of Gibraltar, in the early hours of Thursday.

Twenty-nine men and four women were still alive on board, but one of the men later died in hospital in Almeria.

The service said it is also looking for three more boats in the so-called Alboran Sea, two of them carrying more than 55 migrants each.

According to the UN, more than 61,500 migrants, who often flee violence or poverty, have arrived in Spain since the beginning of 2018, nearly 55,000 of them by sea.