Authorities believe around 52 people are dead after a boat capsized in the Atlantic Ocean.
The boat is said to have turned over about 220 kilometers (135 miles) off Spain’s Canary Islands, carrying 53 migrants and refugees.
The vessel was spotted by a merchant ship earlier south of the Canary Islands. The ship alerted Spanish emergency services.
The Spanish Maritime Rescue Service said that a 30-year old woman was the only survivor.
A rescue service official speaking to The Associated Press said that the woman was clinging to the sinking craft with a dead man and a dead woman next to her.
She told rescuers that the inflatable boat had embarked from the Western Sahara coast and that the passengers were from Ivory Coast.
The AFP reported that the woman had been airlifted to hospital in Las Palmas, on the island of Gran Canaria.
Weather conditions were reported to be bad at the time.
Migrant and refugee deaths are rampant in an area of the Atlantic that separates the West Coast of Africa and Spain’s Canary Islands.
Shipwrecks on the route are hard to verify, and most bodies are never recovered.
According to the United Nations’ migration agency, at least 250 people died on the route to the Canary Islands in the first six months of 2020.
Migrant rights group Walking Borders believe the number to be almost 2,000.
