OVIEDO, Spain

Rescue teams in Spain continued searching for five people on Friday after a migrant ship sank off the coast of Murcia.

A hiker walking along the coast alerted authorities to the small vessel carrying migrants on Thursday morning.

Rescue teams managed to rescue six passengers but also found the bodies of three others who did not survive.

Murcia government official Jose Velez said On Friday that he was "deeply" saddened by the event and that the search continued by air, sea, and land for the five missing passengers.

The search had begun on Thursday but has been complicated by strong waves and winds, which triggered a weather alert in Murcia's coastal area.

Velez highlighted the "need to attend to these immigrants with the respect they deserve ... keeping in mind the socio-political drama that they are risking their lives to run away from."

At the same time, he blamed human traffickers for the unsafe journeys.

This week, at least four small migrant ships carrying 35 migrants arrived on the southern coasts of Murcia.

So far this year, nearly 30,000 people have irregularly migrated to Spain, according to the Interior Ministry, down nearly 25% from the same time last year.

Of those arrivals, just over 11,000 traveled by boat across the Mediterranean Sea to reach continental Spain or the Balearic Islands. More than 15,000 took the even more deadly Atlantic Ocean route to the Canary Islands.