Beijing - Chinese police have returned two pregnant women to Myanmar after rescuing them from traffickers who forced them to become surrogate mothers, state media said on Wednesday.

The two women, both 26, were deported from the border town of Ruili in south-western China's Yunnan province on Tuesday, the official China Daily said.

Police in the eastern province of Anhui said the women were from a village in the Banmo area in the north of Myanmar's Kachin state, the newspaper and other state media reported.

They and a third woman were lured to China with false promises of paid jobs by another Myanmar woman who was arrested on suspicion of being "part of a multinational gang" of traffickers, the reports quoted local officials as saying.

The three women were sold to men in Anhui province for a total of 24,000 yuan (3,500 dollars).

They were then promised that they could return to Myanmar with 300,000 kyats (250 dollars) each if they slept with a Chinese man and gave birth to his child, the government's Xinhua news agency said.

The third woman was deported in January after she alerted police and was rescued.

Police rescued the two pregnant women from Anhui's Taihe county when one of them managed to phone her family in Myanmar, the agency said.

Another Myanmar woman who was believed to be part of the human trafficking gang had disappeared in the central Chinese province of Hunan, it said. (dpa)