N'DJAMENA (Reuters):

Chadian President Idriss Deby vowed yesterday that nine French nationals detained for trying to smuggle out African children to live with European families would pay for their "horrible" crime.

Chadian police arrested the group on Thursday as they were preparing to fly 103 children, aged three to eight years and mainly from Sudan's conflict-torn Darfur region, out of the eastern Chadian city of Abeche on a French charter plane.

"It is a horrible act which I say is a crime. I strongly condemn it," Deby told reporters yesterday during a visit to a social centre in Abeche where the children are being cared for.

"All administrative and judicial steps will be taken so that these people and their accomplices pay for their actions. The Chadian and Sudanese authorities must, from now on, put in place control systems so this never happens again," he said.

Zoe's Ark head detained

The nine detained included the head of a group called Zoe's Ark, which said earlier this year it hoped to bring orphans from Darfur to France for adoption.

Chad's interior minister, Ahmat Mahamat Bachir, said on Thursday that some of the 103 children were Chadian, not all were orphans, and the operation had no official authorisation.

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) was caring for the children yesterday as it tried to establish who they were.

"When the children came out of the plane, many had bandages on their legs and arms and heads, but later when they were taken off, there was nothing (no injuries) there," Jean-Francois Basse, UNICEF senior protection officer for Chad, told Reuters.