BEIJING: More than 1,000 people, many of them young children, have been forced to work as slaves in a brutal human trafficking ring in China that has shocked and outraged the nation, police said on Friday.

More than 450 people have already been rescued in recent days from brick yards and coal mines across two provinces in central and northern China that were run with exceptional ruthlessness, they said. Media reports described freed workers, some as young as eight, as having been beaten, nearly starved and forced to work long hours under appalling conditions, apparently with the involvement of some local police and officials.

At least one man was beaten to death, according to a confession by a brickyard boss on television, with other reports saying the slave trade had been going on since at least March -- and perhaps for years.

“So far, we have rescued more than 200 people including over 40 children,” an official with the Henan provincial public security department, who gave only his surname of Dang, told newsmen by phone. “They were abducted and sold to brick kilns in Shanxi and Henan provinces.” Li Fulin, vice-director of public security in Shanxi, said in a statement that separate police raids there had freed another 251 people.—AFP