MADRID, Spain.- The Spanish authorities rescued this Wednesday one hundred and ten occupants of two precarious vessels intercepted in the waters of the Strait of Gibraltar, sources of the Guardia Civil and Maritime Salvage reported.

The armed institute reported the rescue teams intercepted a patera or rustic boat with eighty-three immigrants onboard, including twenty-eight minors, near a beach in the locality of Barbate, in Cadiz province.

The Special Group of Underwater Activities of the Spanish military police assisted the second patera with twenty-seven people, when it approached the port of the city of Melilla.

Thousands of migrants, many from Africa, try every year to reach the European shores in precarious boats or through the borders of the Spanish cities of Ceuta and Melilla, located in the north of Morocco.