At least 24 of the 80 hostages abducted by Boko Haram in Cameroon have been freed, officials have said.
Army spokesman Col Didier Badjeck said a number of the hostages had escaped, while others were freed after a gun battle between the Cameroonian military and members of the Nigerian militant group.
Some hostages were used as human shields by the extremists, he said, adding that the number of fatalities was not yet clear.
The militants then fled back to Nigeria, with the fate of the remaining hostages unclear.
Cameroon's military managed to track down the group a day after the hostages, many of them children, were abducted in a deadly raid on several villages in the north of the country.
"According to our initial information, around 30 adults, most of them herders, and 50 young girls and boys aged between 10 and 15 years were abducted," information minister Issa Tchiroma said.
It was Boko Haram's largest abduction in Cameroon to date.
Three people were reportedly killed and up to 80 houses destroyed in the attack, which targeted the village of Mabass and several others along the Nigerian border.
The assault came just days after Amnesty International released satellite images of "catastrophic" Boko Haram attacks on two towns in Nigeria.
It believes hundreds of people were killed and that over 3,700 structures were either damaged or destroyed in the attacks in Baga and neighbouring Doron Baga earlier this month.
The campaign group said the pictures, taken on 2 and 7 January, provided "indisputable and shocking evidence" of the scale of the assaults.
The Islamist organisation was also responsible for the kidnap of more than 200 teenage girls from a school in the northern Nigerian town of Chibok last April.
Boko Haram has been fighting a bloody six-year insurgency to create an Islamic state which has left thousands dead and forced hundreds of thousands to flee their homes.
Attacks are increasing in frequency as Boko Haram continues to seize territory in northern Nigeria, and expands its insurgency across the border.
The group has occupied villages along 124 miles of the border between Cameroon and Nigeria.
Chadian troops began to arrive in Cameroon on Sunday in order to help repel the extremists' offensive.
Originally posted 19/01/2015
