Six women and nine children kidnapped in the North-East have escaped their captors, walking for six days through the bush to freedom, an official said today.

The 15 hostages were seized separately from the farming villages of Takulashi in Borno state’s Chibok district and Cofure in neighbouring Adamawa’s Hong district several months ago.

Chibok was the scene of the 2014 abduction of more than 200 schoolgirls by Boko Haram which earned the jihadist group global notoriety.

Three of the hostages along with their five children were seized during a raid on Takulashi in October last year, while the other three with their four children were abducted from Cofure in May, according to Zuwaira Gambo, Borno’s women affairs commissioner.