Four siblings, aged 13, nine, four and a one-year-old baby, have been found alive 40 days after their plane crashed in Columbia’s Amazon.
The Colombian military shared a photo of the children in the jungle. Picture: Reuters
Their mother and the other adults on board the plane when it crashed on 1 May died.
Columbia’s President Gustavo Petro said finding the children was ‘a joy for the whole country’ and that by surviving alone for weeks, the siblings had ‘achieved an example of total survival that will remain in history’, referring to them as ‘the children of peace and the children of Columbia’.
The children are currently receiving medical treatment in the Columbian capital Bogota. Mr Petro said that when he contacted their grandfather to share the good news, he told him, ‘the mother jungle has returned them’.
The siblings and their mother had been flying from Aracuara in Amazonas province to San José del Guaviare on a Cessna 206 aircraft when its engine failed.
The army found the bodies of the three adults who had been travelling with the children at the crash site. According to Reuters news agency, information from the civil aviation authority suggested the children escaped and tried to find help.
Soldiers pose for a photo with the children, whose faces have been blurred. Picture: Reuters
In May, a search and rescue team found some of the children’s belongings, including a drinking bottle, scissors, a hair tie and a makeshift shelter. They also found footprints. This evidence suggested the siblings were alone in the rainforest, a dangerous place home to predators, including jaguars and snakes.
The children may have used indigenous knowledge of fruits and jungle survival skills they learned from their elders in the Huitoto group to survive.
Members of their community assisted in the search operation. The children’s grandmother also recorded a message in the Huitoto language, asking them to stop moving to make them easier to find, which was broadcast from helicopters.
Last month, Mr Petro was criticised for a post on his Twitter account announcing that the children had been found. He erased the tweet the following day and said that the information, given to his office by Columbia’s child welfare agency, could not be confirmed.
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