Spanish police and European Union border agency Frontex were on Friday searching for a boat carrying an unknown number of illegal migrants that had been trying to reach the Balearic Islands, the Spanish Government said.
Open borders activist group Walking Borders had warned on Thursday that three boats with 81 people on board - including 10 women and two babies - had gone missing along the route between Algeria and the Balearics on the Mediterranean Sea.
It was one of the fastest-growing migratory passages into the EU last year even as overall arrivals to the bloc fell. At least 483 illegal migrants died or disappeared last year in the Western Mediterranean trying to reach Europe, according to the International Organisation for Migration.
Frontex said last year smugglers were switching their operations to Algeria from Morocco over what were perceived to be less stringent controls and were using faster boats.
On Friday, the Spanish government's Balearics representative said the Algerian Navy had intercepted two of the three vessels, while two aircraft from Frontex and Spain's Guardia Civil continued searching for the third.
The office did not provide details on how many people the missing boat was carrying, nor about the condition of the illegal migrants on the two rescued boats. Algeria's Embassy in Spain did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Illegal migrant arrivals by sea to the Balearic Islands fell 25 per cent between January and February 15 compared with the same period of last year, according to Spain's Interior Ministry data. Following last year's increase in arrivals, Spain has sought closer cooperation with Algeria against smuggling networks.
Spain's Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska told Reuters last month that Madrid may request more Frontex air surveillance along the Algeria to the Balearics route.
But he ruled out deploying Spanish police or handing equipment to Algeria, with which Spain had a testy relationship in recent years, to combat migration, and said the focus would be on deepening the exchange of security information.
(Reporting by Emma Pinedo, Joan Faus and Paolo Laudani; editing by Aislinn Laing and Nivedita Bhattacharjee)
