- From the visual journalism team
- BBC News
5 hours before
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With scissors and hair clips, seekers inspect a shelter the children have improvised
When four indigenous children went missing after their plane crashed in the Colombian jungle on May 1, a full-scale search was launched to locate them.
Forty days after the crash, a search team finally located the children, ages 13, nine, five and one, after hearing one of them crying. All four were exhausted, malnourished, and dehydrated, but alive.
An arduous search preceded the good news that the whole nation had been waiting for. The following maps give an impression of the extent.
Where have the children gone?
The children traveled with their mother, 33-year-old Magdalena Mucutuy, in a Cessna 206 light aircraft from their home near Araracuara in southern Colombia to San José del Guaviare.
The Avianline charter aircraft was flown by Hernando Murcia (55). Also on board was a local indigenous leader, Hermán Mendoza.
The Cessna disappeared from radar at around 07:30 local time, shortly after Murcia reported engine problems.
It took two weeks to find the wreckage of the Cessna that had crashed nose first into the jungle. The body of pilot Hernando Murcia was found in the wreckage.
The bodies of Hermán Mendoza and Magdalena Mucutuy were found near the wreck a few hours later, but the children were nowhere to be seen.
However, the children’s items found in the jungle gave the search team hope that they had survived the crash.
In addition to the items the children were carrying, the search also found evidence that the youths were well enough to walk and support themselves.
Child-sized strides in the mud and half-eaten fruit showed they were moving, and the lack of blood indicated they were not seriously injured.
While any clue was a welcome sign to the more than 100 soldiers combing the jungle that their quest was not in vain, the dense foliage and remote location meant their progress was painfully slow.
Helicopters were used, but the dense canopy of trees made it impossible to see any detail in the green sea below.
Faced with this confusing environment, the commanders devised a system to keep track of the areas they searched.
Day after day, soldiers combed the jungle with sniffer dogs. They were joined by volunteers from local indigenous groups anxious to find the children.
And although they kept finding new clues, their goal of saving the children proved unattainable.
The search commander explained that it is not so much looking for a needle in a haystack, but more like looking for “a tiny flea in a huge carpet because it is constantly moving”.
The army released maps showing the vast extent of the area they were combing under extremely difficult circumstances.
The helicopters broadcast messages in the Huitoto language, recorded by the children’s grandmother, telling them to stop moving and stay in place to give the army a better chance of finding them .
After 40 torturous days, four Indigenous volunteers finally spotted 13-year-old Lesly, 9-year-old Soleiny, 5-year-old Tien Noriel and 1-year-old Cristin Neriman in a small clearing.
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Watch: New video shows missing children found 40 days after plane crash
The youths were flown to the Colombian capital, Bogotá, where they are being treated at a military hospital.
They were visited by their grandparents and their father Manuel Ranoque.
Mr Ranoque told reporters that his wife and children boarded the fateful flight to join him after he was forced to flee their home.
He said he had been threatened by the Carolina Ramírez Front, an armed faction that split from the rebel Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC) when they signed a peace deal with the Colombian government in 2016.
He also expressed fear for the safety of his children.
The Carolina Ramírez Front has denied threatening Mr Ranoque.
The opposition rebels also denied forcibly recruiting children into their ranks and even claimed they had “good relations” with local indigenous groups.
Her words were met with skepticism. There is little doubt that indigenous communities bear the brunt of the violence perpetrated by the region’s warring factions.
Maps and graphics by the BBC’s visual journalism team, text by Vanessa Buschschlueter, Editor of BBC News Online Latin America.