Eight people have been detained over alleged children trafficking in east China's Fujian Province, local police said Saturday.

Frontier defence police in Fuzhou, capital of Fujian, captured three suspects from a car in a road check on December 24, 2009, when the three, including one man and two women, were en route to Pingtan County to resell two infant girls there.

During interrogation, the three suspects, all natives of Pingtan County, confessed that they had bought the enfants from Jiangxi, a neighboring province of Fujian, for a price of 10,000 yuan (about US$1,471) each, and planned to resell them at a price of 15,000 yuan (US$2,197) each, police said.

The rest five suspects in the human trafficking ring were also detained in the following three months.

Further police investigations show that the human trafficking ring has altogether smuggled 12 infants, including 11 girls and one boy. The suspects bought most of the enfant girls from parents in the remote countryside where boys are preferred.

Police have rescued only five of the smuggled infants and have been in a search for the remaining seven.

(Xinhua News Agency March 27, 2010)