Two newborns were among the first group of women and children to arrive at a refugee camp in Nigeria on Saturday, after a treacherous three-day journey away from a Boko Haram stronghold where they had been held captive.
The exhausted and starving group were some of the 275 people freed from captivity in the Sambisa Forest, the 'headquarters' of the Islamic extremists, after a rescue operation by the Nigerian military.
Officials are now offering medical and psychological support at the Yola refugee camp to the traumatised group after their ordeal, with victims suffering from malnutrition, diarrhea and malaria.
It is still not clear whether any of the latest freed refugees were in the group schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram more than a year ago, sparking the worldwide 'Bring Back Our Girls' campaign.
Mother Lami Musa, aged 27, gave birth the day before the group left Samisa for a refugee camp in Yola, the capital of Adamawa state, crammed into the backs of rickety, open pick-up trucks.
'Boko Haram killed the father of this child,' she said, cradling a four-day-old girl in the sweltering 40-degree heat.
When asked if she had any other children, she said: 'Three of them. Boko Haram killed my husband and grabbed me. I have no idea where my other children are.'
She said she lost her family in an attack by the militants on her village of Lassa in December.
Musa could barely walk when they arrived at the camp, limping on feet swollen to massive size. She said couldn't nurse her unnamed baby, because her breasts have no milk.
She is among several dozen in the group taken first to the clinic at the refugee camp, set up in an unused boarding school.
There, 22 were dispatched immediately to a hospital in town. Dr. Mohammed Auwal said many were suffering from malaria, diarrhea and malnutrition.
The Nigerian military said it has rescued more than 677 girls and women and destroyed more than a dozen insurgent camps in the past week.
On the first day of the trip to evacuate the kidnapped women and children, one military vehicle escorting the group exploded a landmine, wounding two soldiers, according to a soldier traveling with them. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to journalists.
Soldiers on foot then swept the road ahead of the convoy, he said, so it took three days to travel potholed roads for the 300 kilometres (200 miles) southwest to Yola.
The military is now in the process of trying to identify the women and children. as well as give them medical and psychological care to begin their rehabilitation, said Air Commodore Charles Otegbade, the emergency agency's director for search and rescue.
Boko Haram had seized a large swath of northeast Nigeria last year, declaring it an Islamic caliphate.
Nigerian troops ran away before their advance, complaining they were not given enough ammunition or food to fight, and leaving civilians with no defence against an uprising that killed as many as 10,000 people last year. Around 1.5 million people have been driven from their homes.
The tide turned in the past nine weeks with a new infusion of armoury including helicopter gunships, and a coalition with troops from neighbouring countries.
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