Around 370 Asianand African migrants whose ship was intercepted at sea on its way to Spain came ashore in northern Mauritania yesterday, to be screened by Spanish police, officials said.

In what observers described as an almost entirely Spanish immigration control operation conducted outside Spain, the migrants, all men, filed off the battered Marine 1 freighter onto a dock at the Mauritanian port of Nouadhibou.

They were given health checks and food and drink by Spanish and Mauritanian Red Cross officials in a makeshift treatment centre, and then passed into the custody of dozens of Spanish police officers for identity screening.

The operation was agreed at the weekend between Mauritania and Spain. It followed a diplomatic wrangle last week over who should take charge of the migrants, whose vessel was intercepted by the Spanish coastguard off West Africa over a week ago.

"Various groups have come off the boat and are receivinghealth checks... there are no serious health cases," Olivia Acosta of the Spanish Red Cross said.

Some of the migrants were suffering from bronchitis, diarrhoea and sea sickness. Some looked apprehensive as they came ashore to face a reception committee that included dozens of Spanish police, in civilian clothes but wearing fluorescent green jackets.

Consular officials from India, Pakistan and Guinea were also at the dock to meet the migrants, who had said they were mostly from Indian Kashmir but were also thought to include sub-Saharan Africans.

"Up to now, they are mostly from India," said MichaelTschanz of the International Organisation of Migration (IOM),which is hoping to assist those of the migrants who want to voluntarily return home.

After identity checks, the migrants were due to be escorted by Spanish police officers to planes which would either repatriate them to their countries of origin - if these could be established - or fly them to Spanish territory where their immigration status would be decided, diplomats said.

They said the reception and processing of the migrants by Spanish police in Mauritania was a curious extra territorial operation being conducted hundreds of miles from Spanish soil.