The gang that abducted a group of young women in Nigeria 's northeast state of Borno a week ago released the remaining 12 late Saturday, a local official told AFP.

Their release comes as the country has experienced a surge in abductions of young people over the past two weeks.

"All the 12 were released," Abubakar Mazhinyi, president of the local Askira-Uba council, told AFP, adding that they had been taken to hospital.

"They (jihadists) spoke to the parents," he said. "It was the parents that went to the bush."

Last Saturday, 13 Muslim women and girls, aged between 16 and 23 were kidnapped near their farms in land near a nature reserve that has become a hideout for the jihadists.

The gang freed one of them after she told them she was nursing a baby.

No ransom was paid, with t

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