After a week of searches, the forces found the brothers aged 13, nine and four and almost a year old in the south of the country, as announced on Friday by President Gustavo Petro. “A joy for the whole country. The four children who have been missing in the Colombian rainforest for 40 days have been found alive.”
The search for the children kept the country on edge for weeks. In the meantime, it was said that the children were found – Petro himself tweeted the same and later had to take down the tweet. The military released photos of the children, the youngest being carried in the arms of a soldier.
Portal/Colombian Presidency The youngest child is just under a year old
The other three sat on plastic sheets on the floor and were attended to. The children are malnourished and have multiple insect bites, media reported, but are doing well. According to the aeronautical authority, the children were sent to the military hospital in the capital, Bogotá, for medical examinations.
Crash on May 1st
The brothers had an accident on May 1st with a Cessna 206 propeller plane in the department of Caquetá, in the south of the country. Small private planes are often the only way to cover greater distances in the impassable region. The children’s mother, the pilot and an indigenous leader died in the accident.
Children rescued after 40 days in the rainforest
More than a month after a small plane crashed in the Colombian rainforest, four surviving children have been rescued from the jungle. The brothers, aged 13, nine and four and just under a year old, come from an indigenous community in the region. This may have helped them survive on their own for so long. The plane crashed in the south of the country, likely due to engine failure. The pilot, mother and another man died.
The pilot reported engine trouble by radio before the machine crashed, according to the aviation authority’s preliminary report. The pilot had previously announced that he wanted to land in a river. The small plane then collided with the treetops, the engine and propeller were ripped from the machine and the plane fell vertically to the ground.
APA/AFP/Colombian Army The plane was apparently slowed down by the trees
Apparently, the plane had already braked heavily when it collided with the treetops, so the impact on the ground was less intense. Almost no damage was found to the rear of the cabin, the report said. The children may have exited the plane’s wreckage through the front door to the pilot’s left.
Search parties followed tracks
In the search for the children, search teams repeatedly found objects such as shoes, diapers and hair ties, as well as an emergency shelter constructed from leaves and twigs and half-eaten fruit. With the objects and traces found, the military managed to reconstruct the path taken by the children until then. They initially moved four kilometers west of the crash site. Then they apparently hit an obstacle and turned north.
APA/AFP/Colombian Army A dog finally found the right way for children
The Atlantic forest in the region is very dense, which made the search for the disappeared very difficult. Also, it rains almost non-stop. The children – three girls and a boy – belong to an indigenous community, the Huitoto. Knowledge of the region may have helped them survive in the wild after the accident. Her grandmother Fátima Valencia depended mainly on her older sister, who learned a lot about the plants and fruits of the forest from her mother.
Father fled the region
During the week-long search, among other things, a tape with a message from the grandmother was played from the air. But the children were always on the way, their feet now swathed in swaddling clothes, making the search difficult. The “Guardian” reports that the hope of finding the children alive meanwhile rapidly diminished. According to reports, a dog finally put the search teams on the right track.
Relatives reacted with emotion to the news that the children had been found. He feels very happy and grateful, said the grandfather of the four brothers, Narciso Mucutuy. Words were not enough to thank those who helped them find the children, he added, referring to state forces and helpers from indigenous communities in the region.
According to media reports, the children in Colombia were with their mother on their way to their father, who had fled the region after constant threats from a splinter group of the guerrilla organization FARC. Although the security situation improved after the 2016 peace agreement between the government and the FARC, parts of the South American country are still controlled by illegal groups. Indigenous peoples, social activists and environmentalists in particular are repeatedly targeted by criminal gangs.