CHITTAGONG (Bangladesh) - BANGLADESHI surgeons were battling on Sunday to save twins born joined at the stomach and legs.

The twins - one male and the other's sex yet to be identified- were born outside the south-eastern Bangladesh port city of Chittagong on Saturday and were taken to Chittagong Medical College hospital by their chemist father.

'They are joined in the stomach and legs. One is male and has visible sexual organs. But they don't have any anus or developed organs to urinate,' hospital's paediatric surgeon Tahmina Banu told AFP.

'The twins cannot be saved if we don't operate them urgently and create system for passing stool and urine,' she said.

Mosharraf Hossain, another doctor, said surgeons had already started operating on the twins and it might take hours.

'If they survive now, we'll think of separating them six months to one year later,' he said.

'But it would be too risky,' he added.

Four previous operations in Bangladesh to separate conjoined twins in the past four years have resulted in the deaths of all but two children.

Last August a four-month-old Bangladeshi girl died hours after marathon surgery by 50 doctors, nurses and technicians to separate her from her twin sister.

In January last year, an Australian charity flew a set of Bangladeshi twins to Sydney because of poor survival rates of separation surgery in the South Asian nation.

The twins survived an initial operation in the Australian city. -- AFP