An American hostage, who was rescued from Pakistan with her family last week, has been pictured in hospital after she was rushed in for an unknown medical emergency.

Caitlan Coleman's husband Joshua Boyle shared a photograph of his wife on Tuesday morning, seven days after their five years of captivity came to an end.

The image shows a conscious Coleman in bed with one of her three young children - who were all born while the couple was held by Taliban-linked militants.

'My wife has been through hell, and she has to be my first priority right now,' Boyle said in an email to the Associated Press.

In the image Coleman is still wearing a veil while her husband and children have been pictured in Western clothing since their return to Ontario on Saturday.

The couple previously revealed Coleman was raped by a guard during their ordeal and their fourth child - a girl - was killed in a 'forced abortion' by the Haqqani militants.

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Joshua Boyle's wife, Caitlan Coleman, sits with their son Najaeshi at a hospital on Wednesday in Ontario. Coleman was rushed to the hospital on Monday night

Coleman's's husband, Joshua Boyle, did not specify why she was taken to the hospital. They are pictured in a 2016 proof of life video released by the Haqqani militants

'My wife has been through hell, and she has to be my first priority right now,' Boyle, pictured right arriving in Canada, said. Caitlan Coleman is pictured left before the kidnapping

But a Taliban spokesman rejected Boyle's claim that his wife was raped and one of their children killed by members of the group.

'From the time the couple were detained until their release, the husband and wife were not separated from one another precisely due to the fact that the Mujahideen did not want to incite any suspicion,' Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said in a statement, according to USA Today.

'During a period of detention an incident did take place when the woman became ill,' Mujahid said in the statement late Sunday. 'The area was remote, no doctors were present and due to this severe condition, the woman had a natural miscarriage of a girl.

'No one has either intentionally murdered the child of this couple, and neither has anyone violated or defiled them,' he concluded.

Boyle, who is Canadian, his American wife and their three children were rescued Wednesday, five years after the couple was abducted in Afghanistan on a backpacking trip.

On Monday, Boyle said he and his wife decided to have children even while they were held captive because they always planned to have a big family.

'We're sitting as hostages with a lot of time on our hands,' Boyle said.

[We decided] 'Hey, let's make the best of this and at least go home with a larger start on our dream family.'

'We always wanted as many as possible, and we didn't want to waste time. Cait's in her 30s, the clock is ticking.'

Boyle said their three children are now aged four, two and 'somewhere around six months'.

'Honestly we've always planned to have a family of five, 10, 12 children ... We're Irish, haha,' he added.

In an interview with Global News, Boyle talked about how it feels to finally be free.

'A truly bizarre combination of elation at being free and away from those who brutalized us for so long.'

'[And] depression realizing just how much damage we and our children have suffered in these five years that we hadn't even realized,' he said.

Boyle said his eldest son Najaeshi is 'exuberant; honestly freedom seems to have cured half his ills instantly, he's running around examining all the gifts compiled over the years'

'Everything in the house is a wonderland to him,' Boyle said of the boy born in captivity

Boyle is seen playing with his son Najaeshi Jonah in the garden of his parents' home in Smith Falls, Ontario on Saturday. Boyle, his wife and their three kids were freed on Wednesday

The three children are named Najaeshi Jonah, Dhakwoen Noah and Ma'idah Grace.

The parents of Caitlan Coleman have said they are elated she is free, but also angry at their son-in law for taking their daughter to Afghanistan.

'Taking your pregnant wife to a very dangerous place, to me, and the kind of person I am, is unconscionable,' Caitlan's father, Jim Coleman said, told ABC News. But Boyle insists that he was only there to help.

The former call center worker, said that he had gone to Afghanistan with his pregnant wife to help villagers 'who live deep inside Taliban-controlled Afghanistan where no NGO, no aid worker and no government has ever successfully been able to bring the necessary help'.

Boyle has said conditions during the five-year ordeal changed over time as the family was shuffled among at least three prisons.

He has described the first as remarkably barbaric, the second as more comfortable and the third as a place of violence in which he and his wife were frequently separated and beaten.

In an interview with CP24.com, he revealed that the children are slowly coming to terms with their new lives.

'Dhakwoen Noah was still struggling as much as ever with even just being able to look at his grandparents faces without terror', he said in the interview on Sunday.

'But honestly, just this morning he's made a literally overnight improvement in that he has decided he loves his grandmother - after all a hearty breakfast of pancakes was the clincher, it seems - so obviously he's still incredibly troubled and stressed over everything, but it's a major step...she's the first person he's accepted.

He went on to describe how the children are discovering toys and everyday objects for the first time.

'For Najaeshi, it's completely random — he's just explored the idea of a closet and declared he wants to sleep in it tonight and make a giant 'mouse nest' out of the clothes. His quality of life has not just improved, it's gone up a thousandfold,' he said.

'For Dhakwoen, it's the spinning top – he can't get it to spin himself yet but he seems to wish it could spin forever. Needless to say, family members fingers are getting sore but we love him enough to keep spinning it!

'For Ma'idah, it's the discovery that there are other women in the world; she still can't be within a metre of any man except her father but if she sees a woman she starts squirming and trying to get over to her, regardless of who it is — to nestle in the love.'

In an interview with the Toronto Star, Boyle also revealed that he thought it was a joke when his captors told him Donald Trump had been elected president of the US.

'It didn't enter my mind that he was being serious,' Boyle said.

Boyle said his wife was raped by a guard who was assisted by his superiors. He asked for the Afghan government to bring them to justice (A still image made from a 2013 video released by the Coleman family shows Coleman and Boyle while in captivity)

Boyle (pictured, left, with Coleman) said he was in Afghanistan to help villagers 'who live deep inside Taliban-controlled Afghanistan where no NGO, no aid worker and no government has ever successfully been able to bring the necessary help

Boyle was previously married to Zaynab Khadr (second from left), the sister of Omar Kadhr, a former Guantanamo Bay detainee with suspected ties to al-Qaeda

On Saturday, Boyle was pictured playing with one of his sons in the garden of his parents' home.

The boy appeared happy and healthy, digging in the grass as his father showed off the different plants and later spoke on a cellphone.

Coleman, who is from Stewartstown, Pennsylvania, has yet to speak publicly since the rescue.

In an article published by Medium in 2015, one of Boyle's friends told how he had always been interested in Afghanistan and Islam.

He said he was viewed as a 'trouble maker' by the then Conservative Canadian government and that he enjoyed 'thumbing his nose' at authorities.

The author, who met him in 2002 said he feared he may have 'bitten off more than he could chew' with his bold travels to Afghanistan.

'Joshua has a loose connection to Afghanistan, a deep respect for Islam — he may even have been in the process of converting — and a purely academic interest in terrorism, but none of that even remotely qualifies him to travel safely in Afghanistan.

'It could have been simple naiveté, but I, and many others, have always known Joshua as an exceptionally cunning and savvy man.

'Maybe he was overconfident. Maybe he was immature. Maybe this time Joshua just bit off more than he could chew,' he said.

Boyle was once briefly married to Zaynab Khadr, the older sister of former Guantanamo Bay detainee Omar Khadr and the daughter of a senior al-Qaida financier who had contacts with Osama bin Laden.

The Canadian-born Omar Khadr was 15 when he was captured by US troops following a firefight and was taken to the US detention center at Guantanamo Bay.

Officials had discounted any link between that background and Boyle's capture, with one describing it in 2014 as a 'horrible coincidence.'