PHNOM PENH — Thirteen women from the Philippines have been convicted of human trafficking in Cambodia for intending to sell babies they carried through surrogacy.

They were sentenced to four years in prison, but with two years suspended, the Kandal Provincial Court said.

The court said it had strong evidence showing that the women intended on having the babies "to sell to a third person in exchange for money, which is an act of human trafficking".

The women are not expected to serve any jail time until giving birth, and the court did not say what will happen to the babies when they are born.

Surrogacy is illegal in Cambodia, but agencies continue to offer the service.

This case was unusual because surrogates are normally employed in their own countries, not transported elsewhere.

The women were found when police raided a villa near the capital Phnom Penh on 23 September.

After their arrest, Nicholas Felix Ty, undersecretary in the Philippines Department of Justice, said it was the women themselves who were "victims of human trafficking".

But Cambodian interior minister Chou Bun Eng rejected the idea and said she considered the women to be responsible.

Four Vietnamese women and a further seven Filipino women were also caught, but were not pregnant so have been deported, Bun Eng said.

A Cambodian woman was jailed for two months and one day for acting as an accomplice by cooking meals for the mothers, the court said.

Developing countries are popular for surrogacy because costs are far lower.

The Cambodian commercial surrogacy industry began to boom in 2016 after the practice was made illegal in neighbouring Thailand.

Although banned later that year by the Cambodian government, it continued to thrive.

The AFP news agency reported couples from China will pay agencies anywhere between $40,000 (£31,600) and $100,000 (£79,000) to arrange for a Cambodian woman to carry their child.

In 2017, an Australian nurse who ran a surrogacy clinic was jailed for 18 months in Cambodia.

The following year, 32 surrogate mothers charged with human trafficking in Cambodia were released on the condition they raised the children themselves. — BBC