Twenty migrants were missing Friday a day after the boat they were travelling in caught fire off the Algerian coast, the APS national news agency said.
APS, quoting an unnamed security source, said the migrants were among 29 people aboard the ill-fated boat.
A Liberian-flagged vessel assisted the boat and rescued nine people, including two newborn babies, the agency said, adding that some had suffered burns.
The survivors are in "stable condition", APS said quoting Mohammed Sayeb, the director of the Tenes hospital west of Algiers where they were taken for treatment.
Online news website Al-Shuruq quoted a survivor as saying the fire broke out shortly after the migrants set off at midnight Wednesday from the coastal city of Oran in northwest Algeria.
According to the report the passengers -- all of them Algerians -- jumped into the sea to escape the blaze.
It was not clear what started the fire.
A spokesman for the coast guard of Libya, Algeria's neighbor, said Thursday about 15,000 migrants have been intercepted trying to reach Italy by sea this year, giving a number for the first time.
The coast guard has stepped up patrols after receiving new boats from Italy as part of efforts by the right-wing government there to stop migrants reaching Italian shores from Africa.
The UN Libya mission (UNSMIL) gave a much higher estimate, saying in a 61-page report that the coast guard had intercepted or rescued 29,000 migrants in the first nine months of the year.
