Halima Cisse, a 25-year-old Malian woman, has given birth to nine babies on Tuesday – two more than doctors had detected inside her crowded womb.

She gave birth to the nonuplets [five girls and four boys] in Morocco. Mali’s government flew her there for specialist care.

The minister of health in Mali, Fanta Siby, has congratulated the medical teams in Mali and Morocco for the “happy outcome”.

Doctors in Mali had been concerned for her welfare and the chances of the babies’ survival – so the government intervened.

After a two-week stay in a hospital in Mali’s capital, Bamako, the decision was made to move Ms Cisse to Morocco on 30 March, Dr Siby said.

After five weeks at the Moroccan clinic, she gave birth by Caesarean section on Tuesday, the minister said.

BBC reports that a woman who had eight babies in the US in 2009 holds the Guinness World Record for the most children delivered at a single birth to survive.

Two sets of nonuplets have previously been recorded – one born to a woman in Australia in 1971 and another to a woman in Malaysia in 1999 – but none of the babies survived more than a few days.

World record holder Nadya Suleman’s octuplets have grown up and are now 12 years old. She conceived them through in vitro fertilisation.

Nonuplets are extremely rare. Medical complications in multiple births of this kind often mean that some of the babies do not reach full term.