Police led by UK and its counterparts in Australia and the US broke up a paedophile ring that streamed live child sexual abuse from the Philippines in an operation that spanned 14 countries.
The international ring that streamed live abuses of Filipino children as young as six over the internet, was busted as part of 'Operation Endeavour', Britain's National Crime Agency (NCA) has said.
Fifteen victims aged between six and 15 have been rescued and 29 people in 12 countries have been arrested which includes 11 in the Philippines. The Agence France-Presse has reported that in some cases, victims' parents were also involved.
Police have described the use of webcams to live-stream child abuse - a trend that especially emerge from developing countries - as a "significant and emerging threat," the Associated Press reported.
"This investigation has identified some extremely dangerous child sexual offenders who believe paying for children to be abused to order was something they could get away with," the deputy director of NCA told the news outlet. "Being thousands of miles away makes no difference to their guilt. In my mind they are just as responsible for the abuse of these children."
The investigation in Philipines, which began in 2012, saw police from Britain along with their counterparts from Australian Federal Police and US immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Suspects have been identified in Australia, France, the US, Hong Kong, Canada, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Taiwan, Denmark and Switzerland, the NCA said.
Payments made by customers totaling more than £37,500 ($61,000) were exposed by the investigation.
The investigation started in 2012 after British police found a number of indecent videos on computers and a collection of DVD films from webcams when they visited the home of the registered sex offender, Timothy Ford.
Timothy Ford was found guilty of making indecent images of children in 1992 and 2001.
