4 missing children found alive in Colombian jungle after 40 days

After 40 days in the Colombian rainforest, all four children who had been missing since the plane they were traveling on crashed on May 1 have been found alive, Colombia’s president said.

“They have achieved an example of total survival that will go down in history,” President Gustavo Petro said at a news conference Friday night.

When rescuers reached the plane wreckage site last month, the bodies of the three adults on board were found, but there was no sign of the four children known to be on the plane.

In a case that stunned the nation, local indigenous communities from the remote region, along with the Colombian military, then began scouring the jungle for the children, ages 13, 9, 4 and 1.

The children are “weak” and receiving medical care, Mr. Petro said.

The Defense Ministry said in a press release that the children were initially treated by combat medics from the special operations forces deployed in the search, but were transferred to the military base in the city of San José del Guaviare. where they were in stable condition. They will be transferred to a military hospital in Bogotá tomorrow to recover, the statement said.

“We want to share the happiness of all Colombian people with this true miracle that we have known tonight,” Defense Minister Iván Velásquez said in a video posted on social media.

Details remain unclear about who found the children and how they managed to survive for so long in the dense jungle, prone to heavy rains and home to jaguars and venomous snakes.

“It’s a real miracle. It will be news for years to come,” Pedro Arenas, a human rights activist in San Jose del Guaviare, told The New York Times. “After 40 days, it’s pretty incredible news. So there is a lot of joy, there is real happiness.”

The children, members of the Huitoto indigenous community, had traveled with their mother and an indigenous leader from the small Amazonian community of Araracuara, Colombia, to San José del Guaviare, a small town in central Colombia along the Guaviare River. -river. The pilot reported an engine failure and declared an emergency before the aircraft disappeared from radar at around 07:30 on 1 May.

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

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

Conflicting details about the case have left many Colombians confused and angry. On May 17, Mr. Petro announced on Twitter that the children had been found alive, and then the next day withdrew the good newssaying that the national child welfare agency, the Colombian Institute for Family Welfare, had received incorrect information.

In recent weeks, authorities said they had reason to believe the children were still alive, pointing to footprints, diapers and shoes found in the search.

“They took care of themselves. It is their knowledge of the indigenous families, their knowledge of how to live in the jungle, that saved them,” Mr. Petro said at the press conference. “They are children of the jungle. And now they are children of Colombia.”

Federico Rios contributed reporting from Madrid.