BEIJING (AFP) - A pair of conjoined baby girls have been released from a hospital in China almost three weeks after they were separated in a marathon operation, state media reported on Tuesday.

It took a team of 20 medical workers nearly 10 hours to separate the girls, who were joined at their livers, the official Xinhua news agency reported, citing doctors at a hospital in the southern region of Guangxi.

One of the girls took their shared navel while the other may have surgery later to give her a belly button, according to a separate report by the government-run news portal gxnews.com.cn.

"The operation resulted in low blood loss and the two girls are in stable condition," said Dr Yang Tiquan, chief pediatric surgeon of the hospital in Nanning, according to Xinhua.

The twins were born on June 14 in a small hospital in Guiping county, it added.

"I felt really helpless when the doctor told me they were conjoined," the girls' father Ying Yigui said, according to gxnews.

Conjoined twins are rare and they have a low survival rate.