Spain coast guard spots boat during search for missing migrant vessel.

The Spanish coast guard says one of its aircraft has found a boat during a search for a vessel carrying migrants that went missing more than a week ago.

The boat was 71 miles (114km) south of Gran Canaria and had around 200 people on board, the coast guard said.

It added that one of its vessels has been sent to assist the rescue.

The aid group Walking Borders earlier said the fishing boat sailed from a coastal town in southern Senegal that is roughly 1,700km from Tenerife.

It said the vessel had 200 people on board when it left Kafountine on 27 June, heading for the Canary Islands. Many children were said to be on board.

Two similar boats carrying dozens more people are also said to be missing.

There are few details about the other two boats - however, Walking Borders was quoted by the Reuters news agency as saying that one had about 65 people on board, the other up to 60.

That would bring the total number of people missing across the three boats to more than 300.

The news comes just weeks after Europe saw one of its worst Mediterranean migrant shipwrecks, when an overcrowded trawler sank off the Greek coast.

At least 78 people were confirmed drowned, but the United Nations (UN) reported that up to 500 were still missing.
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