An international hunt off the West African coast for a ship believed to be carrying hundreds of child slaves turned out to have been a wild goose chase when it docked and was found to contain only economic migrants.
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But the incident did draw world attention to a very real and sordid trade in children, aid workers said today.
When the MV Etireno docked in Cotonou, Benin's biggest city and main port, authorities discovered only a couple of dozen children with their mothers instead of the expected 180 children sold by poor families to be plantation workers and domestic servants.
"We are still confused. We don't know where the confusion arose. There were not as many children on board as we had thought," said Mr Nicolas Pron of the UN Children's Agency, UNICEF, in Cotonou.
"We are pleased that the world is turning its attention to this issue... If there were not child slaves on that boat there are other boats trafficking children."
The agency estimates that at least 200,000 children are trafficked in the region each year.
Mr Pron insisted that the Etireno was the boat that had been sought in the belief it carried slaves. The Benin government had earlier suggested a mix-up with another Nigerian boat possibly off Equatorial Guinea and possibly carrying Nigerian children.
Benin's social protection minister, Ramatou Baba Moussa, said there were 139 passengers on board, including seven children. Witnesses counted a couple of dozen children on board, all of whom appeared to be accompanied.
"There was a situation and we had to take action. The affair is over. I don't deny that Benin is part of the traffic in children and the government will do all it can to beat it," she said.
No move was made to arrest or question any of the ship's crew. There was no sign of the Benin businessman Stanislas Abadtan or at least two other people against whom international arrest warrants were issued in connection with the trade.
In Geneva today, UNICEF called for international mobilisation against child slavery in West and Central Africa.
"If anything, this whole peculiar episode has at last mobilised attention around the issue," said Ms Lynn Geldof, the agency's spokeswoman.
"A lot of the trafficking is not only into the cocoa plantations, but the trafficking of women and young girls to Europe as well for sexual exploitation purposes," she said.