With tears, smiles and long hugs, two women hostages were freed by Colombia's Marxist rebels on Thursday after years in the jungle, raising hopes for dozens more languishing in secret camps.

In a Venezuela-brokered deal, a helicopter flew deep into Colombia to pick up former vice-presidential candidate Clara Rojas and ex-congresswoman Consuelo Gonzalez, and ferried them back across the border where a plane took them on to Caracas.

In parting, the two kissed young armed women rebels on the cheeks and shook hands with the men in a grassy jungle clearing near the Colombian town of San Jose del Guaviare.

They then hugged the team that flew in to rescue them and spoke to Venezuela's leftist President Hugo Chavez with a satellite telephone, thanking him for his mediation, television images showed.

"Please president, don't drop your guard. The ones left behind want me to tell you that ... We have to carry on working." said Gonzalez, 57, whose husband died while she was six years in captivity. "A thousand thanks. You are helping us to live again."

Rojas, 44, who had a son by cesarean birth during her five years in captivity, appeared skinny and her brown hair fell across her face. Both women looked tired and pale but in generally sound health.

It was the first time Latin America's oldest rebel group has freed any of its high-profile hostages, who include an ex-presidential candidate, French-Colombian Ingrid Betancourt.

At an airport outside Caracas, relatives greeted the women with white lilies. Some wore T-shirts with a message: "Freedom for everyone now."

Rojas wrapped her arms around her mother who uses a walking frame. A photograph of a child hung around her neck.

She told Colombian radio she worried for years after she was separated from the boy.

Gonzalez held her curly-haired granddaughter, who she had never seen. Tears fell down her cheeks as she spoke into a phone.

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Chavez vowed to keep working for the release of other captives, even though Colombian President Alvaro Uribe broke off the fiery left-winger's formal mediation role last year.

"Hopefully we can soon talk about a second group" of freed hostages, Chavez said as he gave live commentary on television of the helicopters arriving in Venezuela.

A similar rescue plan collapsed on New Year's Eve and a Venezuelan air convoy limped home empty-handed after it emerged that Rojas' child, Emmanuel, was no longer in the jungle and had been moved into foster care in 2005.

But the success of the mission on Thursday should bolster the standing of both Chavez and Colombian President Alvaro Uribe despite weeks of bickering over the deal.

Governments from Mexico to France praised their work.

Washington also grudgingly acknowledged the brokering role of Chavez, a leading anti-American critic, but made clear it was not about to ask him to help free three U.S. captives.

The rebels' gesture also spurred hopes for an exchange of guerrillas held in government jails for hostages, including Betancourt, whose case is followed closely in France.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said the release of Rojas and Gonzalez was an incentive to keep working to free other captives. "France is delighted," he said.

Betancourt's mother, Yolanda Pulecio, said, "I hope it will be Ingrid next and that we will be able to have Ingrid in the arms of the whole family."

Colombia's decades-old war is fueled by the Andean country's cocaine trade and kills hundreds of people each year despite a recent ebb in violence.