The Nigerian military has released heart-wrenching images of what it says are survivors rescued from the notorious Sambisa forest where they were held hostage by Boko Haram insurgents.

The military released the images on Thursday. The images show women and children, most of them malnourished, suggesting the survivors were kept under extremely terrible conditions.

PREMIUM TIMES could not independently verify the images.

The military said the true identity of some of the rescued women and girls are yet to be ascertained.

“At the moment, what is upper most and of priority is their movement to a conducive place where they are now undergoing thorough profiling to verify their true identity, where they come from, how they found themselves in the forest, etc,” the military said in a statement. “Additional number of persons are still being recovered from the forest. Until such comprehensive profiling is done, nobody can confirm whether they are among the Chibok girls or not.”