Emergency crews rescued 41 people from the semi-sunken boat around 35km (22 miles) off the coast of the island of Fuerteventura, government officials said on Thursday.

Spain's coastguard found a body in the Atlantic Ocean.

Survivors reported that 16 of their fellow travellers were lost at sea, the deputy head of the central government's representation on the Canary Islands, Teresa Mayans, told a news conference.

The coastguard said it has rescued about 200 migrants, including eight children, who were travelling aboard four small boats in waters near the Canary Islands.

The Canary Islands, located off the coast of west Africa, have become a hotspot for migrants trying to reach Europe.

Last year was one of the busiest in the past decade for crossings, according to government data.

A total of 22,316 people arrived in the Canaries illegally in 2021, compared with 23,271 the previous year.

More than 4,400 migrants including at least 205 children were lost at sea as they attempted to reach Spain last year - more than double the figure in 2020, according to activist group, Walking Borders.

It is the highest number since the organisation began counting missing people in 2018.

The tragedy on Wednesday night happened as European Union interior ministers signed off plans to create a new decision-making body in a bid to beef up the 27-nation block's borders.

They hope to kick-start reforms to the EU's malfunctioning asylum system on a step-by-step basis, beginning next month.

It comes amid acute tensions over who should take responsibility for refugees and what help neighbouring countries should provide.

An estimated one million people, including thousands of refugees fleeing the war in Syria, have entered the bloc since 2015.

At the talks in Lille, northern France, French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin, who acknowledged divisions, said: "the idea was to change the method because the 'all or nothing' strategy until now was mostly leading to nothing."

But the interior minister acknowledged discussions would be "challenging" - in particular when allocating numbers of asylum seekers to member states and decisions on what financial support should be offered.