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STORY: One hundred schoolchildren were released on Monday in Nigeria's Niger state after they were abducted last month from a Catholic school.
It was one of the country's biggest mass kidnappings in recent years.
The released children arrived at the government house in Niger's capital, Minna, and were handed over to the state governor.
One of the children, Florence Michael, said they slept in the forest.
''They gave us tarpaulin, that we should put it down, that we should lie down and sleep, that we should not make noise for them.''
The Christian Association of Nigeria said gunmen seized more than 300 pupils and 12 staff from St Mary's Catholic School in Papiri village on November 21.
Fifty of the children managed to escape.
Here is Niger State Governor Mohammed Umar-Bago:
"I want to reassure parents and guardians of these children that they will be safely delivered to them very, very soon. We have called on medical health workers to come and look at them, they will be checked properly before taking them back to their parents."
He added that authorities were working to secure the remaining hostages.
After news of the rescue, many parents expressed anguish at the lack of information from authorities on whether their children were among those freed.
Some of the abducted children were as young as six.
Nigerian government officials did not publicly comment on how the rescue was conducted, and it was unclear whether the children had been freed through negotiations, ransom payments or a security operation.
The abduction caused outrage over worsening insecurity in northern Nigeria, where armed gangs frequently target schools for ransom.
School kidnappings surged after Boko Haram militants abducted 276 girls from Chibok in 2014.
