Twenty-four people involved in a case in which more than 20 infants from Vietnam were trafficked to Guangdong province have been sentenced to prison and fined, with the female ringleader sentenced to death, the court in charge of the case said on Friday.

Huang Qingheng, the gang leader, had organized people, mainly women, to buy infants from Vietnam since 2010, according to the announcement released by the People's Court of Fangchenggang city in the region on Friday.

They traffickers illegally carried the infants, aged from 10 days to months, over the border to Dongxing, a city in the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region. From there, the children were sold to families in the cities of Shantou and Jieyang, both in Guangdong province.

The gang also transported pregnant women from Vietnam directly to Guangdong, where they waited for the woman to give birth and sold the newborns.

Police from China and Vietnam launched joint efforts to fight cross-border crimes involving the abduction and trafficking of children.

In this case, police captured 42 suspects who sold more than 20 male infants, of whom 11 have been rescued but the others are still missing.

Of the 24 who went on trial and were sentenced this week, 15 are Chinese residents and eight claim to be Vietnamese residents. The final one has been confirmed to be a Vietnamese citizen and will be expelled from China, according to the verdict.

The gang leader, Huang Qingheng was sentenced to death for the crime of trafficking children, and gang member Huang Manli was sentenced to life imprisonment. The other convicts received prison sentences of between 22 months and 15 years.