Bogota: On Friday, Colombian police reported finding four Indigenous children who had been missing for 40 days after surviving a tiny plane accident in the Amazon jungle. This brought an end to a nationwide search that had been going on for days.
President Gustavo Petro informed reporters upon his arrival back in Bogota from Cuba, where he signed a cease-fire agreement with leaders of the National Liberation Army rebel group, that the youngsters were unaccompanied when searches discovered them and are currently receiving medical attention.
The president declared the children to be "examples of survival" and stated that their story "will remain in history." No information about how the kids survived on their own for so long was immediately made public.
The Cessna single-engine propeller plane carrying six people and a pilot made an emergency declaration owing to an engine failure in the early hours of May 1. This is when the tragedy occurred.
Shortly after the little plane vanished from the radar, a desperate hunt for survivors started. The plane was discovered in a dense area of the rainforest two weeks after the disaster, on May 16, and the remains of the three adults on board were recovered, but the little children were not present.
Sensing that they might still be alive, Colombia's army intensified its search for the four siblings, ages 13, 9, 4, and 11 months, and flew 150 soldiers into the area with dogs to find them. Numerous Indigenous tribe volunteers also contributed to the search.
The children were bundled in thermal blankets as the soldiers and volunteers posed for photos with them, according to images the military tweeted on Friday. The tiniest youngster was given a bottle by one of the troops.
Later, the air force posted a video to Twitter that showed soldiers boarding a chopper with the kids using a queue before taking off in the pitch-black. The tweet provided only the information that the plane was traveling to San Jose del Guaviare.
The military command of Colombia stated on its Twitter account that "the combination of our efforts made this possible." Soldiers in helicopters dropped cartons of food into the forest in the course of the search in an area where vision is severely hindered by mist and dense vegetation in the hopes that it would help the kids survive.
Rescuers used megaphones to blast a message recorded by the siblings' grandmother instructing them to stay in one spot while searching for the siblings using flares fired from aircraft flying over the bush at night.
Additionally, there were rumors concerning the whereabouts of the kids, and on May 18, President Petro tweeted that the kids had been located. He later erased the post, alleging a government agency had given him incorrect information.
From the Amazonian village of Araracuara to San Jose del Guaviare, a little town on the border of the jungle, the group of four kids had been journeying with their mother.
They belong to the Huitoto tribe, and according to officials, the older kids in the group knew how to survive in the rainforest.
The president revealed on Friday that he had initially thought the kids had been saved by one of the nomadic tribes that still roam the remote area of the jungle where the plane crashed and have little interaction with the government.
Petro clarified, however, that one of the rescue dogs that the soldiers brought into the jungle had really discovered the kids first.
Officials did not specify how far away from the collision scene the kids were when they were discovered. However, the crews had been looking 4.5 kilometers (just over 3 miles) away from the location where the little plane crashed onto the forest floor.
A pair of footprints, a baby bottle, diapers, and pieces of fruit that appeared to have been bitten by humans were among the little clues that soldiers discovered in the jungle as the search for the children continued.
They were spared by the jungle, Petro added. They were born in the bush, but they are now also Colombian citizens.
