BOGOTA, Colombia: Four local children missing for more than around two weeks after a plane crash in the Colombian Amazon – a region with few roads – have been found alive, said President Gustavo Petro Wednesday, declaring “joy for the country.”
President Petro shared the news on Twitter, saying the children were spotted after “arduous search efforts” by the military. The authorities had deployed over 100 soldiers with sniffer dogs to locate the minors who were traveling in an airplane that came down in the Amazon on May 1, killing three adults.
Rescuers believe the four children, aged 13, 9, 4 and an a 11-month-old baby, have been wandering through the forest in the southern Caqueta department since the plane crash. Earlier on Wednesday, country’s armed forces said that search efforts accelerated after rescuers came across a “shelter built in an improvised way with sticks and branches,” leading them to believe there were survivors. The Cessna plane crashed in the Amazon forests in the municipality of Solano, department of Caqueta.
The photographs released by the armed forces showed scissors and a hair tie among branches on the jungle floor. Previously, a baby’s drinking bottle and a half-eaten piece of fruit had been found.
The soldiers, on Monday and Tuesday, found the bodies of the pilot and two adults who had been flying from a jungle location to San Jose del Guaviare, one of the major cities in Amazon rainforest of Colombia. One of the deceased, Ranoque Mucutuy, was the mother of the four who are from the Huitoto ethnicity.
Wild animals, giant trees that can grow up to 40 meters tall and heavy rainfall made the “Operation Hope” search difficult, in a region with few roads that is also difficult to access by river. Airplane transport is common in the region.
. Three helicopters have been used to help while one of which amplified a recorded message from the children’s grandmother in the Huitoto language, telling them to stop moving through the jungle. Authorities have yet not indicated what caused the plane crash.
According to the Colombian disaster response body, the pilot had reported problems with plane engine just minutes before the airplane disappeared from radars.
