Spain's Maritime Rescue Service says at least 479 people, including more than 100 children, were rescued over the weekend while attempting to cross a narrow stretch of the Mediterranean Sea from North Africa.  

The service said 330 migrants were rescued on Saturday, most of them in the Strait of Gibraltar area and some further east in a part of the Mediterranean known as the Alboran Sea.  

They included about 100 minors who were picked up by a Spanish Civil Guard vessel and a Moroccan man who was found drifting on an inflated inner tube from a truck tire.  

The rescue service says another 149 people were brought ashore on Sunday.  

The United Nations' International Organization for Migration said on July 11 that more than 16,900 migrants had arrived in Spain so far this year, a figure close to the number of arrivals in Italy.

Nearly 2,900 more made it into Spanish territory by crossing into the country's two enclaves in northern Africa.