Spain's sea rescue service pulled 29 sub-Saharan African migrants from a capsized boat early Friday off the coast of southern Spain

Spain's sea rescue service pulled 29 sub-Saharan African migrants from a capsized boat early Friday off the coast of southern Spain, but 22 others who were also aboard are missing, a rescue official told CNN.
The 22 missing include 19 men, a woman, a 5-year-old boy and a baby, according to accounts from the rescued survivors, said the official, Miguel Zea, of the Maritime Rescue Service in the port of Almeria.
Spanish authorities are searching for the missing, who were lost in Mediterranean waters with a temperature of about 16 or 17 degrees Celsius (about 60-62 degrees Fahrenheit), which might normally allow a person to survive an average of 10 hours, Zea said.
The 29 people rescued are mainly men, but also include three women, including two who are mothers of the missing boy and the baby, respectively, Zea said.
The survivors were taken to the port of Motril in neighboring Granada province.
The rescue service began combing the Mediterranean on Thursday afternoon after receiving unofficial information, from contacts in Morocco, that a boat of migrants was heading to Spain, Zea said.
Poverty-stricken migrants from Africa have long tried the risky voyage across the Mediterranean in hopes of reaching Spain and a chance to improve their economic life in Spain or elsewhere in the European Union.
Last month, the rescue service located 42 migrants from Africa and Asia on a flimsy boat near Motril.
But Spain's increased cooperation with Morocco and other countries in Africa has stemmed the flow of migrants in rickety boats.
The Interior Ministry reported last January that the number of illegal migrants arriving on Spanish coasts in 2010 was 3,632, some 50 percent less than in 2009, and that the overall flow of migrants to Spanish coasts had declined about 80 percent in the past decade.

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