Spain's Interior Minister on Thursday asked the European border agency Frontex to seek permission from African nations to patrol their waters in a bid to "save lives" on the perilous irregular migration route from the continent to the nearby Canary Islands archipelago.

Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska said Frontex had operated in African territory during the last peak of migration to the Canary Islands in 2006, and already worked with Spain's border forces gathering intelligence in the Canary Islands.

Now, it should seek permission from Mauritania, Senegal and Gambia - countries of origin and transit for migrants crossing the Atlantic to Europe on precarious fishing boats - to take on human traffickers and curb departures.

Frontex could only truly protect Europe's borders from irregular migration if it operated outside of them as well, he said.

"It is particularly important to improve its capacity to act abroad, both in terms of return and border management," he told EU interior ministers gathered in Luxembourg.

The Atlantic route to the Canary Islands has seen the fastest growth in irregular migration in recent years, though numbers remain below those on the Central Mediterranean route towards Italy.

Spanish Interior Ministry figures show the Canary Islands have received a total of 26,758 migrants to July this year, compared with 39,910 in the whole of 2023.

The flow has raised tensions between the archipelago's regional administration and the central government over the care of some 5,000 underage migrants.

Last month, a boat overturned as rescuers approached it, leaving at least 48 people unaccounted for in the deadliest such incident in 30 years of crossings on the route.

On Wednesday, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez made an impassioned and in European terms rare defence of migration, to prop up Spain's ageing population and economy, and insisted illegal migration represented only a small proportion of arrivals.