MAPUTO, July 12 (Reuters) - A Mozambican girl who gained worldwide fame after being born in a tree where her mother sought refuge during devastating floods in 2000 has won a court battle to strip her father of his parental rights.

State radio reported on Thursday that a Mozambican court had ruled in favour of Rosita Mabuiango and her mother, who had accused the child's father of stealing and selling goods donated to help the family.

The girl, now 7 years old and known as Baby Rosita, was born in a tree in February 2000 as the crocodile-infested floodwaters of the Limpopo river swirled in a disaster which claimed more than 700 lives.

Television viewers saw Rosita, her mother Sofia and her grandmother plucked to safety by a South African helicopter just minutes after her birth -- a media event that helped galvanise world support for victims of the disaster.

The baby's celebrity was later credited with helping to raise some $500 million in international assistance following the flooding, the worst disaster to hit Mozambique in almost half a century.

Radio Mozambique said the Chibuto District Court had found that goods donated to the family by the government and foreign and local well-wishers, which included livestock, a refrigerator, a generator and a solar panel, had all been sold by Rosita's father Salvador Mabuiango.

"We found that the father sold the child's property and we have been unable to recover most of the goods," the Chibuto district attorney Jose dos Santos told the national broadcaster.

Dos Santos said all the court could do was remove Mabuiango's paternal power of the child and declare that henceforth all of Rosita's property would be handled exclusively by her mother.

Rosita's mother Sofia told the daily Noticias newspaper she was relieved by the court ruling.

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