Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain - A pair of identical twins who were separated accidentally at birth and raised apart from one another are set to receive hundreds of thousands of euros in damages, according to judicial sources on Spain's Canary Islands.

The two women were reunited at age 28 in Las Palmas, capital of Gran Canaria Island, in 2001 when a saleswoman who had met both of them noticed how similar they looked.

Court sources said Tuesday that four people had been awarded a total of 900,000 euros (1.2 million dollars) in the case.

The saleswoman organized a meeting between the twins, who started investigating the circumstances of their birth. A DNA test confirmed that one of them had been exchanged for another baby at hospital.

Thus, the woman whom one of the twins regarded as her twin sister was the child of another couple, who had brought up the real twin.

The discovery upset the twin who had been separated from her parents so much that she needed years of psychiatric treatment.

The court ordered the regional health service to pay 360,000 euros to the separated twin, and 180,000 euros each to the other twin, their mother and the woman who had been brought up as one of the twins. (dpa)