Hundreds of sheep ran loose through the north-eastern Spanish city of Huesca and had to be rounded up by police after a shepherd fell asleep, local police said.

Police were alerted to the presence of a flock of around 1,000 sheep making its way through the centre of Huesca just after 4:00am (local time) on Tuesday by several phone calls from local residents, a local police spokesman said.

"The shepherd had fallen asleep and did not realise the sheep had escaped their pen," he said.

Two police cars were dispatched to the scene and it took five officers and the shepherd 30-45 minutes to round up all the sheep and return them to their pen.

Local police uploaded a video on their official Facebook page of a police car with its lights on pulling up in front of the flock of runaway sheep.

Huesca, the capital of a province with the same name located just south of the Pyrenees mountain on the French border, has a population of 53,000 people.

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AFP