MADRID, July 10: At least 15 migrants, including nine children, died aboard a boat trying to reach southern Spain from Africa in what Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero on Thursday called “an intolerable tragedy.”

A police spokesman said the body of a woman was found in the boat along with 33 survivors of the attempted crossing when it was intercepted some 50 kilometres south of Almeria on Wednesday.

The bodies of the others who died during the crossing, including the children aged between one and four years, had been thrown overboard by their travelling companions,” he said.

The survivors, who public radio RNE said included three pregnant women and a baby, were all severely weakened after their journey.

Speaking on a visit to Greece, a favourite destination for migrants from Asia, Zapatero said it was “an intolerable tragedy for the human spirit.” ”We are in an alarming situation,” he added.

“Either we help Africa to fight against extreme poverty, or our state of solidarity, our social state, will be in danger,” he warned.

Zapatero called on developing countries to “assume their responsibilities” by contributing to development aid and guaranteeing that the world food situation would not worsen world hunger.

“It is unacceptable that as extreme poverty increases we see development aid fall ... the West has the resources and the capacity to help extreme poverty disappear.” ”As long as people are desperate and cannot feed their children they will try to reach Europe,” Zapatero said.

But while “Europe cannot become a fortress” it also cannot be “a place anyone can enter as they like,” he added, calling for a system of legal and controlled entry and a strengthening of the European surveillance agency Frontex.

His Greek counterpart Costas Caramanlis also expressed shock at the latest deaths, and urged a political response in the form of “a real European immigration policy.”

On Monday, 14 migrants from Nigeria went missing and are feared dead after their boat capsized off the southern coast of Spain just as it was being aided by a rescue ship which managed to save 23 others.

Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba said on Wednesday he was concerned by the rise in recent weeks in arrivals of migrants on Spanish shores on boats from Africa which he linked to the sharp rise in the cost of food.

“If the situation is bad in Europe, in Africa it is very bad,” he said during an interview with radio Cadena Ser.

A total of 921 would-be illegal immigrants died at sea trying to reach Spain in 2007, according to a tally by the Organisation for Human Rights in Andalusia (APDH-A), a Spanish humanitarian group.

Of these, 732 perished close to the Atlantic coast of north Africa at the start of their journey and 189 near the coasts of Spain, it said.

The majority, 629, were from sub-Saharan Africa, 287 were from north Africa and five were Asians.

Spain has been a magnet in recent years for African migrants aspiring to reach Europe, most of them heading for the Canary Islands archipelago off the northwest coast of Africa.

Increased air and sea patrols and repatriation agreements signed by Spain with several African countries that make it easier to send back clandestine migrants have meant the numbers sharply declined last year. —AFP