Colombia's FARC rebels freed 10 members of the armed forces held hostage in jungle prison camps for more than a decade on Monday, the last of a group the drug-funded group had used as bargaining chips to pressure the government.

The four soldiers and six policemen were released to a humanitarian mission led by the International Committee of the Red Cross in what the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia called a gesture of peace.

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Wearing olive fatigues and seeming well fed and relatively healthy, the 10 men stepped off a helicopter provided by Brazil after the Marxist rebels freed them in a remote area of southern Colombia.

Following their successful recovery from the jungle, the hostages were taken to the city of Villavicencio, received by medics of the security forces and some immediately reunited with family members in the VIP lounge of the small airport, according to a report on local English language news website Colombia Reports.

It said the release marked a “milestone” in the Colombia conflict.

Smiling and joking with a medic, one soldier left the aircraft draped in the Colombian flag and skipping with joy. Each carried a plastic bag of belongings and one was accompanied by what appeared to be a small pig that had been his pet in the jungle. Another had what looked like a monkey on his shoulder.

"To these victims of the intolerance and cruelty of the guerrillas, soldiers and policemen of Colombia, welcome to freedom," President Juan Manuel Santos said from the presidential palace. "Freedom has been long delayed, but now it's yours."

The release could signal that the FARC is taking tentative steps toward a bid for talks that may end Latin America's oldest insurgency after five decades of killing and destroying economic infrastructure.

But many Colombians remain skeptical that the guerrilla group, which is still believed to be holding as many as 700 civilian hostages for ransom, will lay down its weapons after having used previous peace talks to strengthen their forces.

The logistics of feeding and moving hostages has become more difficult for the FARC as an increasingly effective U.S.-backed military offensive has killed its leaders and driven the guerrillas back into ever more remote regions.

As a result, the police say, cases of kidnapping for ransom have fallen 90 percent since 2000 to 208 incidents last year, while the number of extortion cases surged 33 percent in 2011 from the previous year.

Reuters and msnbc.com staff contributed to this report.

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The most important leader of Peru's leftist Shining Path insurgency has been captured by security forces after being shot in a remote jungle rife with drug trafficking, President Ollanta Humala said on Sunday, announcing his first major victory against what remains of the rebel group.

Artemio, the nom de guerre of Florindo Eleuterio Flores, was seriously wounded and receiving medical attention, Humala said.

The rebel boss led a remnant group of several hundred guerrillas who went into the cocaine trade after the founder of the Maoist insurgency was imprisoned in the 1990s - all but ending a bloody war against the state that killed nearly 70,000 people.

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Though the rebels no longer pose a potent risk to the stability of the state, Artemio still claims allegiance to jailed Shining Path founder Abimael Guzman.

 

 

"We can tell the country today that the terrorists in the Huallaga Valley have been defeated, having captured alive Artemio," Humala said at a military base in the jungle.

Humala initially had said Artemio was dead.

Artemio was wounded early on Thursday and suffered a punctured lung and a severe wound to one of his hands that caused heavy bleeding.

Defense Minister Alberto Otarola said special forces attacked Artemio but gave no details about the operation. One local media outlet said Artemio had been shot by one or more members of the Shining Path who conspired with the government to turn against him.

After the shooting, some of Artemio's aides took him to a medical clinic and a nurse who was forced at gunpoint to bandage his wounds later said he was mortally wounded. His aides fled with Artemio as army helicopters chased them, but eventually they abandoned him on a riverbank, to weak to go on.

Peruvian anti-drug police tried for years to arrest Artemio and the United States two years ago offered a multimillion dollar reward for information leading to his capture.

Peru is the world's top grower of coca, the raw ingredient for cocaine.

Humala, who fought against the Shining Path when he was a military officer in the 1990s, has vowed to step up efforts to catch what the government calls "narco-terrorists." His predecessor, former President Alan Garcia, failed to stamp out several hundred rebels, who have yet to surrender their arms.

"With this, I think we can now begin to pacify the Huallaga," Humala said referring to the major cocaine trafficking area.

Humala's approval rating rose 7 percentage points to 54 percent in January after he shuffled his cabinet to give it a more law-and-order bent and to crack down on protests against big mining projects.

In December, the reclusive Artemio emerged briefly from hiding to ask the government for a truce and for amnesty after years of fighting. His pleas were rejected and government officials said they would hunt him down.

Besides the Shining Path group in the Huallaga Valley, another faction of the rebels is active in a knotted bundle of river valleys in southeastern Peru known as the VRAE, which is the world's most densely-planted coca-growing region.

Security analysts say the group in the VRAE no longer espouses Maoist ideology and is basically a criminal enterprise engaged in the drug trade.

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Lori Berenson has returned to Peru from a holiday trip to New York well ahead of the court-set deadline for the American convicted of aiding leftist Peruvian rebels in the 1990s, her lawyer said Friday.

Berenson, 42, arrived Thursday night with her 2-year-old son, Salvador, said Anibal Apari, her attorney and the child's father.

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"She's at home now and is returning to a normal life," Apari told The Associated Press. He and Berenson met in prison and are amicably separated.

A court decision allowing Berenson to visit family in New York stirred controversy in Peru, including the objection of President Ollanta Humala.

Berenson told the AP when she left with Salvador on Dec. 19 that she had every intention of abiding by the court's decision that she must return by Jan. 11.

The 17-day trip was her first outside the country since her 1995 arrest.

Berenson was paroled in 2010 after serving 15 years for acting as an accomplice to terrorism by aiding the Tupac Amaru rebel group.

The former Massachusetts Institute of Technology student, whose parents are college professors, is not permitted to leave Peru permanently until her sentence ends in 2015.

Berenson has acknowledged helping the rebel group rent a safe house where authorities seized a cache of weapons after a shootout with the group. She insists she didn't know guns were stored there and says she never joined the rebels.

The December decision by a three-judge appeals court to allow Berenson to travel overturned a lower court ruling and prompted an outcry among many Peruvians.

"I can't help but show my annoyance, my disappointment at this situation, in which terrorists are being allowed to leave the country while still on parole," Humala said while Berenson was abroad.

Peru's Congress unanimously approved legislation Wednesday night prohibiting courts from allowing trips outside the country for parolees convicted of terrorism.

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The Associated Press and msnbc.com staff contributed to this report.