Paris ? Two French journalists released by militants in Iraq returned Wednesday to a jubilant France and described a four-month ordeal during which masked gunmen shuttled them among five hide-outs and interrogated them at length as combat thundered nearby.

During a brief news conference at an air base near Paris, Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot said their captors generally treated them well, though there were periods of fear and uncertainty.

Like the French government, the two journalists said they were caught off-guard by their release Tuesday, which came after the militants transported them to a hastily arranged rendezvous in Baghdad, the Iraqi capital, with French intelligence agents.

“It was a bit unexpected,” said Malbrunot, 41. “Because we had thought it would be a somewhat more organized release. … When I got out of the trunk of a Mercedes and saw the French flag three yards away from me, I thought, it seems like the end.”

Cleanshaven and smiling wearily, Chesnot and Malbrunot descended from a French military intelligence plane and were embraced by tearful relatives on a rainy runway at the Villacoublay military air base outside Paris.

A beaming President Jacques Chirac also was on hand to celebrate the still-mysterious ending of a drama that strained France’s relationship with Baghdad’s pro-U.S. government and shattered illusions that the French were shielded from anti-Western violence in Iraq.

The accounts of the ex-hostages and Chirac’s government did not answer some lingering questions that distinguish this case from most of the high-profile abductions of foreigners in Iraq.

French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin and other ministers insisted Wednesday that, contrary to widespread speculation, no ransom was paid for the release of Malbrunot, a correspondent for Le Figaro newspaper, and Chesnot, a reporter for Radio France International.