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By Diadie Ba

DAKAR, April 26 (Reuters) - Exhausted after days at sea, 89 African migrants who were rescued from a sinking wooden boat in the Atlantic while trying to reach Europe were put ashore in Senegal on Thursday by a Spanish hospital ship.

The group, which included several women and at least one child, had stormed aboard a Spanish fishing vessel that went to their aid off Mauritania on Monday, before being transferred to the Spanish hospital ship Esperanza del Mar.

Along with the 89 survivors, the hospital ship disembarked the corpses of two other migrants who had died while trying to reach the Spanish Canary Islands. The survivors said they had thrown 11 other bodies into the sea before they were rescued.

It was the latest migrant drama to confront authorities in Spain, which from its position on Europe's southern flank has been trying to stem a tide of illegal job seekers from Sub-Saharan Africa. They seek to escape Africa's poverty and find better lives in Europe.

More than 30,000 illegal migrants, including many from Senegal, came ashore last year in the Canaries after making long, risky voyages. Hundreds die in the attempt.

At Dakar's port on Thursday, Senegalese Red Cross workers and firemen helped some of the migrants off the hospital ship. Suffering from exposure and fractured limbs, some were carried on stretchers to waiting ambulances.

Senegalese police spokesman Colonel Alioune N'Diaye said his country had fulfilled its humanitarian duty by allowing the rescued migrants to be brought to Dakar.

"We'll do this whenever these people at sea have the good fortune to be rescued by ships like this," he said.

The migrants, who included Senegalese and other African nationalities, were taken to a police station to be identified. Local officials did not allow them to speak to reporters.

Spain has offered to help repatriate the non-Senegalese with assistance from the International Organisation for Migration.

Spanish officials praised Senegal for allowing the migrants ashore. But they expressed frustration at an earlier refusal by Mauritania to take them, despite a request from Madrid.

The laws of the sea require that any ship in distress and its occupants should be taken to the nearest land -- in this case, Mauritania, which has received aid and even patrol boats from Spain to help intercept illegal migrants.

In another incident involving Africans trying to reach the Canary Islands, two migrants were found dead on a boat carrying 69 people which arrived off the southern coast of Tenerife, Spanish officials said.

In a diplomatic offensive in West Africa, Madrid has signed a series of accords with regional governments offering increased aid in return for help to stop clandestine migration.

EU lawmakers In Strasbourg on Thursday backed the formation of rapid reaction teams to help countries such as Spain and Italy deal with sudden influxes of illegal migrants. (Additional reporting by Blanca Rodriguez in Madrid and Jeff Mason in Strasbourg)

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