Bissau – The government of Guinea-Bissau said has dismantled a criminal network trafficking children to the Gambia, where they are forced by Islamic schools to beg on the streets.

Maria Inacia Gomes, of the state-run Institute of Mother and Child, told a news conference in Bissau that police in the southern port of Buba uncovered the smuggling ring when they stopped two trucks carrying 61 children aged as young as four and above.

Three men suspected of trafficking the children were arrested, while several others, including village chiefs and religious leaders, are also thought to be involved in the network.

In Muslim-majority Gambia, where religious leaders have enormous social and political power, children have long been entrusted to teachers known as marabouts who educate them in residential Qur'anic schools, called daaras.

But research by Human Rights Watch (HRW) has shown that in many daaras, marabouts are using education as a cover to send the children out to beg, inflicting severe physical and psychological abuse on those who fail to meet daily quotas.

The practice was described in a 2010 report by HRW as "akin to slavery".

UN's children's organisation UNICEF estimates that around 100 000 boys - known as talibes - are forced to beg on the streets of Senegal and Gambia.

Unicef spokesperson Abubacar Sultan told the news conference that many of the children discovered in Buba were sick or very weak and that initial enquiries had revealed most were from poor families adding that they have put the children in an environment that will enable a speedy recovery pending completion of the investigation.