(Transcript from World News Radio)
Harrowing stories have begun emerging from women who were freed from a Boko Haram stronghold in northern Nigeria last week.
A group of 275 women and children are now at a government-run relief camp receiving medical and psychological care.
Helen Isbister has more.
(Click on the audio tab above to hear the full report)
After three days travelling across the vast Sambisa forest on the back of a pick-up truck, the rescued women and children finally arrive at the Yola relief camp in eastern Nigeria.
In total, there are 61 women and 214 children, the majority of them girls.
Many of them have broken bones.
All are desperately are hungry and thirsty.
One woman, 27-year-old Lami Musa, walks slowly, with the help of a soldier.
The pain of the movement is etched across her face.
By her side, a journalist carries her baby for her.
The child is just three days old.
The next morning, tears glisten in her eyes as she describes how she ended up a prisoner of Boko Haram.
(Translated)"We were in the market selling when they came and took me and my husband into the bush. Then they killed him and took me away. They took me so I could marry one of their commanders. When they realised I was pregnant, they said I was impregnated by an infidel and they killed my husband. 'Once you deliver in a week's time we will marry you to our commander,' they said. I delivered at night and we were rescued by the soldiers the following morning."
Another woman - Asama Umoru - tells how she kept a secret radio to track the apparent progess of the country's military.
(Translated) "I would go hide in the corner of the forest at night and listen to the news with few of my friends and we heard that the soldiers were recapturing the towns from Boko Haram. We were praying day and night for them to come save us and if we die in Sambisa then Allah bless our souls."
Others say the Islamists never let them out of their sight - not even when they went to the toilet.
Video has been released by Nigeria's airforce, which appears to show the moment the rescues finally happened.
From the air, Boko Haram militants are seen scattering in different directions.
The vision then shows women and children escaping from huts in the forest where they were being held captive.
Asama Umora described what was happening on the ground.
(Translated)"When the military jet went past, we heard shots. The Boko Haram fighters said we should stand in front of them as human shield, we refused, then we started hearing bullets flying around, then they ran off and left us alone. Then the soldiers came but they didn't realise in time that we were not the enemies, some of us started praying and shouting that we are women and children but some of us were run over by their trucks. When they stopped, they asked us to gather in one place."
Some of the other women have told how fellow captives were stoned to death as the military closed in.
For the freed, the fight is now against severe malnutrition.
Medical staff at the camp measure the wasting-away frames of children.
The women tell how they were were fed just one meal of ground dry maize a day.
They say the mothers were so hungry they couldn't produce any breast milk.
The food and medicine now being handed out at this camp can't heal deep emotional scars inflicted by many months of captivity.
Dr Muhammad Amin Suleiman is from the Emergency Management Agency.
"Even those that were able to escape on their own from their houses, they must have some psychological defects. Not to talk of those that where in captivity for some months, their condition is so terrible.That is why we are mobilising a lot of psycho-social teams."
The Nigerian military says it has rescued more than 700 people in the past week in an offensive against the Islamist grou
But with 2,000 estimated to have been kidnapped since the beginning of last year, many hundreds more still remain in captivity.
They include the more than 200 schoolgirls who were kidnapped from Chibok.
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