2 dead, 4 missing as 81 migrants saved off Canary Isles

Two migrants died and another four went missing off the Canary Islands on Saturday as Spanish rescuers came across a boat in trouble while returning from an earlier rescue, the coastguard said.

After a long night at sea in bad weather, the Salvamento Maritimo lifeboat returned to Arguineguin port in Gran Canaria just after sunrise carrying 81 survivors and one body, while its rescue helicopter brought back another body.

A Salvamento spokesman said the alert came in on Friday about a boat in trouble about 150 nautical miles south of Gran Canaria, with the Guardamar Polimnia rescuing 46 sub-Saharan Africans, all of them men.

"When it was on its way back to Arguineguin, it found another and as it was approaching to help, the boat overturned and people fell into the water," he told AFP.

The lifeboat crew managed to pull 35 people to safety, all of them North Africans but also found the body of a person who had died, while a Salvamento rescue helicopter found another, he said.