VILLACOUBLAY, France (AP) – Freed French hostage Florence Aubenas, looking thinner but radiant, arrived home to a joyful welcome yesterday after she and her Iraqi assistant were safely released from five months’ captivity in Iraq.

President Jacques Chirac greeted Aubenas with a kiss on the cheek at an airstrip in Villacoublay, west of Paris, where her flight touched down. She spent the first minutes of her homecoming embracing her family and did not immediately address reporters.

Earlier, Chirac went on television to praise officials for their efforts to free the 43-year-old French journalist and Hussein Hanoun al-Saadi.

“At the end of a long, painful, 157-day captivity that was shared by all French people, they will at last return to their families and loved ones, and I want to tell them of our joy,” Chirac said.

Aubenas’ sister Sylvie told France-Info radio: “We are mad with joy.”

“We’ve been awaiting this day for a long, long time,” her brother Olivier told The Associated Press by telephone.

Chirac did not provide details of the release, neither did a brief statement from the foreign ministry. But former foreign minister Michel Barnier, who worked on the case until leaving the government this month, said France paid no ransom, and defence minister Michele Alliot-Marie thanked officials in the DGSE spy agency.

Iraqi authorities made an exception for Aubenas’ plane to leave the Baghdad airport, which has been shut down for two days by a sandstorm, said French ambassador Bernard Bajolet. The plane had a brief stopover in Cyprus.

Aubenas’ supporters prepared a party last night at Place de la Republique square in eastern Paris, where giant pictures of the former hostages hang.