They find 4 children lost in the jungle of Columbia after 40 days

After spending 40 days in the Colombian jungle, the four children who have been missing since the plane they were traveling in crashed on May 1 have been found alive, according to the Colombian president.

“They themselves achieved a model of complete survival that will go down in history,” President Gustavo Petro said at a press conference on Friday evening.

When rescuers arrived at the crash site last month, the bodies of three adults on board were found, but there was no sign of four children on board.

In an issue that has gripped the nation, indigenous communities in the remote region, along with the Colombian army, begin scouring the jungle in search of children ages 13, 9, 4, and 1.

Pietro said the children were “vulnerable” and were receiving medical care.

The Ministry of Defense said in a press release that the children were initially treated by doctors from the Special Operations Forces that participated in the search, but they were transferred to the military base in the city of San Jose del Guaviare, where they were located. in stable condition. The statement said that they will be transferred tomorrow to a military hospital in Bogota to continue their recovery process.

“We want to share the happiness of all the Colombian people with this real miracle that we knew tonight,” Defense Minister Ivan Velazquez said in a video posted on social networks.

Details about who discovered the children are not clear, nor is it clear how they managed to survive for so long in such a dense forest exposed to heavy rains and home to jaguars and venomous snakes.

It’s a real miracle. “This will be news for many years,” Pedro Arenas, a San Jose del Guaviare-based human rights activist, told The New York Times. “After 40 days, it’s pretty amazing news. So there’s a lot of joy, there’s really happiness.”

The children, indigenous Huitoto, traveled with their mother and an indigenous chief from the small Amazonian community of Araraquara, Colombia, to San José del Guaviare, a small town in central Colombia on the banks of the Guaviare River. The pilot reported engine failure and declared an emergency before the aircraft disappeared from radar around 7:30 am on 1 May.

Soon, the Colombian Air Force and other branches of the military deployed search and rescue aircraft and helicopters, as well as land and river teams. Indigenous communities in the region have joined the process.

Using a loudspeaker that pitched loud enough to be heard within a radius of about a mile, they played a recording that the children’s grandmother in Huitoto, their native tongue, had told them to stay in one place and people were looking for them.

The conflicting details of the case have confused and angered many Colombians. On May 17, Petro announced on Twitter that the children had been found alive and backtracked the next day, announcing that the Colombian Institute for Family Welfare, the national authority that monitors children, had received incorrect information.

In recent weeks, authorities have indicated they have reason to believe the children are still alive, pointing to footprints, diapers and shoes found during a search.

They defended themselves. Petro said at the press conference that it was learning from indigenous families and learning to live in the jungle that saved them. “They are the children of the jungle. And now they are the children of Colombia.”

Federico Rios Collaborated with reports from Madrid.