ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Turkish authorities say they have freed 49 hostages from one of the world’s most ruthless militant groups without firing a shot, paying a ransom, or offering a quid pro quo.

But, as the well-dressed men and women captured by the Islamic State group more than three months ago clasped their families yesterday on the tarmac of the Turkish capital’s airport, experts had serious doubts about the Government’s story.

The official explanation “sounds a bit too good to be true”, said Sinan Ulgen, a former Turkish diplomat who chairs the Istanbul-based Centre for Economics and Foreign Policy Studies. “There are some very legitimate and unanswered questions about how this happened.”

The hostages — whose number included two small children — were seized from the Turkish Consulate in Mosul after the Islamic State group overran the Iraqi city on June 11. Turkish leaders gave only the broadest outlines of their rescue, yesterday.

Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said the release was the work of the country’s intelligence agency, rather than a special forces operation.

“After intense efforts that lasted days and weeks, in the early hours our citizens were handed over to us and we brought them back,” Davutoglu said.

The hostages’ joyous reunion at the airport came as an enormous relief after the recent beheadings of other hostages — two US journalists and a British aid worker — by the Islamic State group. The gruesome deaths briefly re-ignited a debate over whether the US or British Government should pay ransoms to free hostages.

Turkey’s State-run Anadolu Agency reported no ransom had been paid and “no conditions were accepted in return for their release”, although it didn’t cite any source for its reporting.