20 Migrants Drown En Route to Spain

Twenty migrants drowned today as they attempted to reach Spain's Canary Islands after the rubber boat they were travelling in broke apart in the sea.

A merchant vessel rescued 11 survivors, including four children, who told officials in Gran Canaria that the other passengers had lost their lives when their boat split apart before dawn, Spanish state radio reported.

Thousands risk dangerous seas, near-starvation and brutal heat to make journeys of up to 1,200 miles from the coast of west Africa to the Canaries. In search of work and a better life, migrants travel in flimsy, makeshift wooden boats with outboard motors, crammed with people.

So far this year, between 500 and 3,000 west Africans have drowned attempting the crossing; around 25,000 have made it alive. In one week in September, around 3,000 illegal immigrants reached the Canary Islands by boat.

The wave of migrants trying to get into Europe via Spain's southern islands has turned immigration into one of the country's biggest political issues, and the government has put pressure on African countries to accept the return of as many of their citizens as possible.

Adán Martín, president of the Canaries' regional government, has called the influx of migrants "Spain's worst humanitarian crisis since the civil war".

The former army barracks being used as detention centres across the Canaries were overflowing and the measures to patrol the coastlines were inadequate, he said.

More than 700 teenagers who have arrived on boats without their parents have had to be made wards of the Spanish state. But accommodation for them is so full that a camp is being built at the top of Tenerife's mountain.

Sengalese officials last month refused to accept aircraft carrying 100 migrants whom Spain was trying to deport.

Senegal suspended repatriation flights in May after returnees said Spain handcuffed them during the flight, something Spanish police denied.