Two new-born babies snatched from a Kuwait hospital and missing for weeks have been found by police and returned safely to their respective Syrian and Indian parents, officials said on Wednesday.

Police arrested the alleged kidnapper and her husband on Tuesday, the officials said. The one-day-old Syrian girl was snatched two weeks ago from a Kuwait City hospital, while the Indian baby boy was seized from the same hospital a month ago.

"Life has come back to us," al-Qabas daily quoted Syrian Tayseer al-Hassan, father of baby Tasneem, as saying.

The arrested Asian couple is believed to have accomplices in the two kidnappings, which shocked this oil-rich Gulf Arab nation and raised fears an organised gang was at work.

"The efforts of police has led to the arrest of the kidnappers of the two babies," Health Minister Mohammad al-Jarallah told reporters at the hospital, adding tests on the couple "proved they are not able to have children."

"We found with them counterfeit birth certificates and papers from private hospitals," he said.

Police acted on a tip that the woman, claiming she had given birth to twins, asked the hospital for registration papers, an Interior Ministry official told newspapers. The Asian couple led police to the babies in their apartment.

The babies were handed back to their parents after tests showed they were in stable condition, Jarallah said.

"I was informed last night of the news, so I headed to the hospital and fed my baby. I could not sleep all night until I saw her again in the morning," Tasneem's mother, Khansaa Abdoun, told Reuters at the hospital.

Asked how Tasneem was abducted, Khansaa Abdoun said" The kidnapped new-born Indian baby boy, Ghanshyam Derashri, was also snatched from Maternity Hospital, where security has since been tightened, before being returned to his parents.

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