Police in Hanoi arrested four suspects in February while they were trying to take two babies out of the country to China.

Since then, the authorities have detained three more and the hunt for others connected to the gang continues.

One detained trafficker, Trinh Thi Nga from the northern province of Ha Tay, initially claimed to be a victim of the child traffickers who had planned to sell her one-month-old infant.

Later, police found out that her accusations were false and that she was a member of the trafficking syndicate.

Police named the other three alleged traffickers as Nguyen Thi Thinh and Hoang Duc Hien, both from Ha Tay Province, and Tran Thi Hoa from northern highland Son La Province.

The police say the traffickers made themselves known to needy pregnant or breast-feeding women and enticed them to sell their offspring.

The traffickers told the mothers that their children would be placed with adoptive parents who lived in places such as Hanoi.

But they later confessed the children were to be taken to China and sold at twice the price.

Police say the traffickers bought another child, just eight months old, from Nguyen Thi Ut Nho in southern Bac Lieu Province for 8 million dong.

Detectives in the Hoan Kiem district of Hanoi said in a six-month period from last July to February this year, the ring had smuggled up to 30 babies, mostly newborn, to China.

HIGHER NUMBERS

But the number of smuggled children might be much higher as the gang had been active before that, officials said.

The district police said the scale of the ring's activities was so large that they had to transfer the case to central police to follow up.

It is believed that the smugglers had been scouring for babies and pregnant women from poor families in rural areas across the country.