Four children missing since their plane crashed on May 1 have been found alive after spending 40 days in the Colombian jungle, the Colombian president said.
“They themselves have achieved an example of total survival that will go down in history,” President Gustavo Pedro told a press conference Friday night.
When rescuers arrived at the plane’s wreckage last month, they found the bodies of three adults on board, but no sign of the four children on board.
In one case that captivated the nation, indigenous communities in a remote region, along with the Colombian military, began searching the jungle for 13-, 9-, 4- and 1-year-old boys.
The children are “weak” and are receiving medical treatment, Pedro said.
Medics from the Special Operations Forces participating in the search initially treated the children, but they were transferred to a military base in the city of San Jose del Guerrier, the Defense Ministry said in a press release. In steady state. Tomorrow they will be taken to a military hospital in Bogotá to continue the recovery process, the statement said.
“We want to share the joy of all Colombians with this true miracle that we know tonight,” Defense Minister Iván Velázquez said in a video posted on social networks.
Details about who found the children are unclear, and how they managed to survive for so long in such a dense jungle, home to heavy rains and jaguars and venomous snakes, is unclear.
“It’s a real miracle. It’s going to be news for years,” Pedro Arenas, a human rights activist in San Jose del Guavier, told The New York Times. “After 40 days, it’s incredible news. So there’s a lot of joy, really joy.”
The children, who are members of the Huitoto tribal people, have traveled with a tribal leader from the small Amazonian community of Araraguara, Colombia, to San José del Guavier, a small town on the banks of the Guavierre River in central Colombia. Before the plane disappeared from radar around 7:30 a.m. on May 1, the pilot reported engine failure and declared an emergency.
The Colombian Air Force and other branches of the military soon dispatched search and rescue planes and helicopters, as well as ground and river teams. Tribal communities in the area joined the movement.
Using a loudspeaker loud enough to be heard up to a mile away, the children’s grandmother played a recording in their native language, Huitodo, telling them to stay put as people searched for them.
The conflicting details of the case have confused and outraged many Colombians. On May 17, Pedro announced on Twitter that he found the children alive and backtracked the next day, after the Colombian Agency for Family Welfare, the national authority that monitors children, reported receiving false information.
In recent weeks, authorities have indicated they have reason to believe the children are still alive, pointing to footprints, diapers and shoes found in the search.
“They fended for themselves. What saved them was what they learned from the tribal families, learning to live in the jungle,” Pedro told a press conference. “They are children of the forest. Now they are children of Colombia.
Federico Rios Contributed reporting from Madrid.
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