The Spanish government’s delegation in the Canary Islands said rescuers retrieved 32 survivors and one body overnight from a rubber boat in waters south of Fuerteventura, the closest of the archipelago’s islands to the African coast.

One of the survivors died on the rescue boat.

The delegation quoted some survivors as saying that some 60 people were on board when the boat set off four days ago from a beach near the southern Moroccan town of Tan-Tan.

Walking Borders, a non-profit group that works with migrants in peril and provides assistance to their relatives, said that its research indicated the boat had carried only 42 people when it departed Morocco, leaving up to 11 victims.

Abdullahi Hassan reports.