More than thirty people are missing at sea after two accidents involving boats carrying illegal immigrants to Italy and Spain.

The Italian authorities are searching for five people, believed to be Albanians, after their dinghy sank in a collision with another boat off the south-eastern port of Brindisi.

Two bodies were recovered.

Nine of the boat's occupants managed to swim to safety on a nearby oil platform.

Meanwhile off the Moroccan coast, twenty-six people are missing after a boat thought to be carrying illegal immigrants to Spain overturned near Tangiers.

Two people are known to have died in the incident.