JAKARTA, Indonesia -- Fearing child-trafficking gangs will exploit the chaos of the tsunami disaster, Indonesia has placed restrictions on youngsters leaving the country, ordered police commanders to be on the lookout for trafficking and posted special guards in refugee camps.

UNICEF and other child-welfare groups warn that the gangs -- who are well-established in Indonesia -- may well be whisking orphaned children into trafficking networks, selling them into forced labor or even sexual slavery in wealthier neighboring countries such as Malaysia and Singapore.

Such trafficking, if confirmed, would vastly deepen the suffering of children already struck hard by the Dec. 26 massive earthquake and tsunami. Indonesia estimates that 35,000 children on Sumatra island's Aceh province lost one or both parents to the disaster.

Fueling the suspicions, many Indonesians have received mobile phone text messages this week inviting them to adopt orphans from Aceh. Police are investigating the messages. It's not clear whether such messages are pranks, real adoption offers or linked in some way to trafficking networks.

But child-welfare experts warn that the messages could be a sign that children are being removed from the province, reducing their chances of being reunited with relatives or surviving parents who may be searching for them.

Officials concede that, so far, they have little hard evidence of specific cases, but say the aftermath of a natural disaster is a perfect breeding ground for such traffic. The threat of trafficking appears more serious in Indonesia than any of the other southern Asian nations hit by the tsunami, probably because its scale of death and destruction is greatest and its territory more remote, UNICEF director Carol Bellamy told The Associated Press in an interview yesterday.

Making matters worse, the hardest-hit area in Indonesia -- Aceh -- is not far from the port city of Medan and nearby island of Batam, which are well-known transit points for gangs shipping children and teenagers out of Indonesia.