A welfare center in Huizhou, Gaungdong Province that is caring for 13 infants who were sold by their parents says it cannot legally allow the children to be adopted and is waiting for the birth parents to claim their babies.

"We hope their parents can take them back as soon as possible. The welfare center can act only like a foster home and those infants need the care of their parents when growing up," Chen Su'e, dean of the Huizhou Children Welfare Center, told the Global Times Tuesday.

Huizhou police only reported on Monday that they recovered 15 children from child traffickers in October last year. Twenty-six people, including the fathers of three infants have been arrested. One of the babies was found dead and another has been returned to the parents who sold him. 

The investigation showed that 14 of the children were from Wenshan Zhuang and Miao Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan Province and the other was from Huizhou.

Huizhou police told the media on Monday that boys were sold for as much as 35,000 yuan ($5,568), while the parents of girls received 10,000 yuan. The youngest infant was about a month old and the oldest was just over a year old, police told the Huizhou-based Dongjiang Times.

"In Wenshan, some people sell a child to make money to help them build a new home. If they sell two children, they will have enough money for a new house," Xie Ying, a police officer in Huizhou, told the newspaper.

"In recent years, we found that parents who sell their own children are on the increase because of the crackdown by Chinese police on child-trafficking of kidnapped children," Zhang Zhiwei, a lawyer of Beijing Bairui Law Firm, told the Global Times Tuesday.

"I was shocked and saddened when I heard the babies were sold by their parents," Chen told the Global Times Tuesday, adding that her welfare center is offering good care to their children who are in "quite good" health.

Chen said the welfare center is not the legal guardian of the children and they can't make any decision regarding adoption.

"A lot of citizens have called to ask if they can adopt these kids, but at the moment only their birth parents can take them back, as required by the police," Chen added.

Zhang said that in similar child-trafficking case, the children would stay in the welfare center or go back to the family that bought them if their births parents don't claim them.