DAKAR, Oct 26 (Reuters) - A Senegalese lone survivor from a voyage of African illegal migrants in which around 50 died after three weeks lost at sea was put ashore in Senegal on Friday by a Spanish hospital ship, officials said. A Spanish fishing boat found seven bodies and one weak survivor on Wednesday in a half-sunk open-topped wooden boat adrift off Mauritania. The survivor and the bodies were transferred to the Spanish hospital and rescue vessel Esperanza del Mar which took them to Senegal's port capital of Dakar.

It was the latest tragedy involving thousands of illegal migrants in rickety boats who attempt the dangerous journey every year from the West Coast of Africa to the Spanish Canary Islands, seeking work in Europe. Many die in the attempt.

The young survivor told rescuers the migrants' boat carrying some 50 people left the Mauritanian port of Nouadhibou more than 20 days ago and then got into difficulties on the high seas.

In Dakar on Friday, the lone survivor was carried in a stretcher from the Spanish hospital ship to an ambulance. Clutching a plastic bag of his belongings to his chest, he looked thin and tired but did not speak.

"He is Senegalese," Dakar port police chief Medoune Diouf told reporters, but he did not give the man's name.

Seven bodies wrapped in white canvas shrouds were also carried ashore by the Spanish seamen.

Diouf said those travelling on the ill-fated migrant boat included some Senegalese but also Malians and Guineans.

"They were young men who wanted to go to Spain ... they were 20 days at sea, some didn't even survive 15 days," he said.

According to the story the survivor told his rescuers, the dead were thrown or washed overboard after they died.

Aircraft and patrol boats from Spain and other European countries now regularly sweep the waters off West Africa to try to intercept illegal migrant boats.

Spanish officials say this, coupled with a policy of repatriating detained illegal migrants, has succeeded this year in sharply reducing the flow of clandestine job-seekers heading to the Canaries by sea.

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