African migrants found dead off Morocco coast

Spain's maritime rescue service has found 14 bodies in the sea and rescued 17 people after a boat carrying migrants from Morocco began to sink in the Mediterranean.

A Spanish coast guard plane spotted the boat about 29km off the Moroccan coast on Thursday afternoon following a tip-off nearly 24 hours earlier that it had left Nador, Morocco, and was heading to Spain. Those on the boat are believed to be from sub-Saharan Africa.

Search operations are continuing because one of the migrants said about 70 people had been on the boat, a rescue official told the Associated Press on Friday.

Each year thousands of suspected illegal immigrants from Africa try to reach Europe by setting sail in small, fragile boats.

The Spanish coast guard said another 17 people had been rescued off the coast of Alhucemas.

The Spanish newspaper El Pais said the alarm had been raised by a family member of a passenger on the boat.

The aircraft dropped an inflatable raft and some survivors managed to scramble on to it, the paper reported.

The survivors - 14 men and three women - were taken to the Moroccan port of Alhucemas. Some were said to be in need of urgent medical attention.

In recent years Spain has seen a decline in the numbers of African migrants reaching its shores by boat, since a peak of 13,425 in 2008.

The migrants, fleeing poverty in West Africa, risk their lives in open, rickety boats threatened by strong currents.