11 migrants die after boat capsizes off Morocco: medic

RABAT: Eleven migrants trying to reach Europe died after their boat capsized off the north coast of Morocco, medical sources and a human rights group said on Wednesday.

Of the 34 people travelling in the boat, reached up by the Moroccan navy at midday on Tuesday, two children, three women and six men died, and another 12 were hospitalised, a doctor in the coastal town of Hoceima told AFP.

All but one of the victims drowned, the other dying while being transported to Hoceima hospital, according to Faisal Oussard, local representative for the Moroccan Association of Human Rights.

They were all sub-Saharan migrants but their nationalities were not known.

Oussard said the boat capsized nine kilometres (six miles) off Hoceima, having set off from Nador, 130 kilometres to the east, either headed for the north African Spanish enclave of Melilla, or mainland Spain.

The sea was calm when the accident took place, but the boat, a rigid inflatable, or RIB, was far too small for the number of people it was carrying, he added.

The condition of those hospitalised in Hoceima and the fate of the 11 people who escaped without injury were not known.

The Moroccan authorities frequently expel sub-Saharan migrants across the Algerian border, which is their main point of entry. (AFP)