The couple at the centre of the Internet twins row last night vowed to do all they could to keep the baby girls in Britain - but conceded they might have "to let go".

Solicitor Alan Kilshaw, 45, and his wife Judith, 47, of Buckley, North Wales, who have four children between them, will fight in the High Court for custody after the twins were taken into care by social workers.

Six-month-old Kimberley and Belinda were carried out of the Beaufort Park Hotel, near Mold, on Thursday night swaddled in blankets after an Emergency Protection Order was served on the couple.

Their fate will be considered by the High Court next week.

Mrs Kilshaw said: "We have got to go on fighting. Alan and me will fight on. We are very strong.

"We are fighting a very powerful body. It's like David and Goliath, and I think it's been cast before it's even been heard."

She added: "We will try our best to get the girls back but you have got to be realistic and if that is the case we will have to let go."

Her husband, who was more positive, said: "One chapter has ended now but another is going to start."

Their solicitor, family law specialist Dianne Miller, said she believed Flintshire County Council, which obtained the Emergency Protection Order, would try to make the twins wards of court.

She said she was looking to appoint leading counsel Heather Swindells, who is based in Birmingham, to attend a High Court hearing next Tuesday.

She said: "Tuesday is the beginning - the end is some way off."

The council's chief executive said yesterday that the babies were "safe and well" and added: "Further legal steps are now in hand which will place all of the issues, including the complex legal, practical and international dimensions, before the High Court prior to the expiry of the Emergency Protection Order on January 26."

The scandal blew up earlier this week when it was revealed the Kilshaws had paid to adopt the babies through an Internet adoption agency in California after they had already been sold to another couple.

Californian couple Rich-ard and Vickie Allen, who claim they were duped into handing back the twins after caring for them for two months and paying an adoption broker a reported £4,000, repeated their offer of "a good home" for the twins.

Mrs Allen said from California that she sympathised with the Kilshaws after Thursday's events, adding: "My heart goes out to them and it does make me upset.

"I've got nothing against them and I can understand the pain they must be feeling having the children taken away from them."

The agency, A Caring Heart, acted as a facilitator between the couples and the babies natural mother, Tranda Wecker, 28, who has also said she wants them back.

In a statement, owner Tina Johnson, 32, of San Diego, said: "A Caring Heart does not sell, trade or engage in the trafficking of babies. This is illegal and is not what is happening in this case."