A relative of the late Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez has been freed after being kidnapped and held for ransom for more than three months.

Key points: Melissa Martinez Garcia is the great niece of famed author Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Melissa Martinez Garcia is the great niece of famed author Gabriel Garcia Marquez She was kidnapped on August 23 and held for more than three months

She was kidnapped on August 23 and held for more than three months The kidnappers wanted millions for her return

Colombian President Ivan Duque announced on Monday (local time) that the military had rescued Melissa Martinez Garcia in a special operation.

About a dozen people were detained.

The great niece of the famed writer was kidnapped on August 23 while returning home to Santa Marta from her job overseeing work on a banana farm.

Mr Duque described her captors as "common delinquents" whose leaders had ties to paramilitary groups and wanted millions for her return.

"It was an impeccable operation of human and strategic intelligence for several months to preserve her life, and to get to the heads of this organisation," he said.

Video released by the military showed the recently rescued captive running into an embrace.

Melissa Martinez Garcia poses with the officers that rescued her in a rural area of northern Colombia. ( AP: Colombia's National Police Press Office )

She is the granddaughter of Jaime Garcia Marquez, Gabriel Garcia Marquez's brother.

Garcia Marquez, affectionately known as "Gabo", wrote the novels One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera — works that were praised for his mastery of the "magical realism" genre.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez wrote the novels Love in the Time of Cholera and One Hundred Years of Solitude. ( Reuters: Edgard Garrido )

He was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1982, with the Swedish Academy saying: "In his novels and short stories we are led into this peculiar place where the miraculous and the real converge".

He died in 2014.

AP/ABC