"The situation of human trafficking in Vietnam has not improved yet," said Senior Lieutenant Colonel Tran Dinh Huan, deputy head of the Public Security Ministry's Anti-trafficking Office.

"The situation in some locations is very complicated." The police-run newspaper An Ninh Thu Do said in the campaign from mid-August to mid-October, police had identified more than 1,200 trafficked people, most of them women.

Police arrested 221 suspects, charged 137 and rescued 77 victims. Police said traffickers made heavy use of the internet to exploit young women. Traffickers often go online to find girls in debt, invite them to go shopping in border provinces, then sell them.

At least 6,684 Vietnamese women and children have been trafficked abroad since 2005, police said. Vietnam is a source and destination country for human trafficking.

Vietnamese men, women, and girls are trafficked for sexual and labour exploitation to countries including China, Cambodia, Thailand, Hong Kong, Macau, Malaysia, Taiwan, South Korea, Britain and the Czech Republic.