LOS ANGELES - TWO of the octuplets born in California earlier this year have been released from the hospital and sent home, hospital officials said on Wednesday.

'This is a happy moment for everyone - the family, physicians, nurses and entire (neonatal intensive care) staff,' Dr Mandhir Gupta, of Kaiser Permanente Hospital in Bellflower, California, where the six boys and two girls were born.

The babies, delivered on Jan 26 by Cesarean section some nine weeks ahead of schedule, were only the second set of octuplets in history to be born alive.

At birth, the infants weighed between 680g and 1.54kg.

'It is always rewarding whenever a premature infant goes home as a healthy baby,' he said, without adding when the six other babies will be ready to be released.

The octuplets were to live with their mom Nadya Suleman at her new home in Orange County, California, 50 miles south-west of Los Angeles.

The case of Ms Suleman, 33, provoked outrage from health experts and the public because the single mother conceived the octuplets through in-vitro fertilisation.

She said in an interview earlier this month that she paid a sperm donor 'a certain amount of money' as part of a 'business arrangement' while trying to become pregnant.

Critics have expressed consternation that Ms Suleman, who is unemployed, has six other children under the age of seven and no discernible means to support them.

News reports said Suleman has accepted a donation of round-the-clock nurses for the babies, at the house purchased by her father to accommodate her greatly expanded family. -- AFP