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Ten hostages were released yesterday after being held in a Colombian jungle hideaway for up to 14 years.

The group of men, including six police officers and four soldiers, had been kept captive longer than any other group in the world.

They punched the air as they were met by relatives in Villavicencio, 45 miles south of Bogota.

Some even had pets they kept while being held by rebels, including a peccary pig, a monkey and two birds.

(Image: Getty)

Among the freed men was one of the longest serving hostages, Sgt Luis Alfonso Beltram, who was embraced by his mum after waiting 5,145 days for freedom.

Olivia Solarte, who was reunited with her 41-year-old son Trujillo who had been held since July 1999, said: “I shouted! I jumped up and down!”

President Juan Manuel Santos told the group: “Welcome to liberty, soldiers and policeman of Colombia. Freedom has been very delayed but now it is yours.”

The hostages were flown out to freedom by Brazilian army helicopter after negotiations by the Red Cross with Colombia’s outlawed FARC revolutionary army group.

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Red Cross spokesman Jordi Raich added: “We express our happiness at an operation that has allowed the reunion with 10 families that we were waiting for so long.”

FARC is still holding a number of civilians and President Santos ruled out any peace talks until they were freed.

He said: “The country will know it when the government believes there are enough guarantees to begin the process.”

The head of Colombia’s anti-kidnapping police believes there were at least six hostages, including four Chinese oil workers, seized last June.

(Image: AP)

The citizens' watchdog group Fundacion Pais Libre maintains a list of at least 400 people the FARC kidnapped or has otherwise held against their will since 1996 who were never freed.

It does not expunge a name from its records until the person is released or a body is found.

Two serious government-FARC peace negotiations failed over the past three decades, and recent weeks have seen an upsurge in violence in the conflict.

The FARC killed at least 11 soldiers in a mid-March attack in Arauca near the Venezuelan border and the military responded with two precision bombings on rebel camps that killed more than 60 insurgents.

(Image: AP)

The rebels have in recent years suffered their worst battlefield setbacks ever, beginning when Mr Santos was defence minister from 2006-2009 and thanks to billions in US military assistance and training.

Their main source of funding is the cocaine trade and military pressure has made holding kidnap victims increasingly difficult for the FARC.

The mission was brokered by leftist former Senator Piedad Cordoba, a friend of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez who has served as a go-between in the release of 20 FARC hostages since January 2008.

Ms Cordoba told reporters her work would be done with this week's releases as she has no desire to become involved in cases in which money rather than politics are involved.

She said, however, that the activist group she leads, Colombians for Peace, plans to send letters to the FARC asking it exactly how many civilians it holds.

(Image: Getty)

The FARC has only publicly acknowledged holding captives it considered "exchangeable": police, soldiers or politicians it held for political leverage, hoping to swap them for imprisoned rebels.

It held scores of such prisoners in the late 1990s when it controlled about half the countryside but gradually released them all, never obtaining the hoped-for exchange.

Some captives were rescued. Franco-Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt and three US military contractors in 2008 were freed in a bold ruse involving Colombian soldiers posing as members of a fake international humanitarian group.

But others, at least 25, died in captivity, many killed by FARC insurgents when rescuers real or imagined neared.

(Image: Getty)

Among those in attendance for the release was Rigoberta Menchu, the Guatemalan rights activist who won the 1992 Nobel Peace prize.

She said it is now time for Colombia's government to respond to the FARC's gesture with its own display of political willingness to attain peace.

But analysts caution that peace talks, even back-channel negotiations, could be a long time coming.

Many do not believe they could happen before 2014 presidential elections.