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After 40 days of being lost in the Amazon jungle, four Indigenous children were found alive by Colombian soldiers after the children, one as young as 11 months old, survived a plane crash that killed three adults including their mother.
The children are all siblings and are ages 13, 9, 4 and 11 months. Their successful rescue was announced on Friday, with Colombian President Gustavo Petro tweeting that the four children had been found.
“A joy for the whole country! The 4 children who were lost 40 days ago in the Colombian jungle appeared alive,” Petro wrote in the tweet, translated from Spanish.
The Colombian military also posted about the successful search and rescue mission on Twitter along with pictures of the children and the soldiers who rescued them, writing that unionized efforts of groups across Colombia helped make the mission possible.
The country’s defense minister Iván Velásquez Gómez called the rescue “Operation Miracle,” in a tweet. “Huge congratulations to the @FuerzasMilCol and to those who did not lose hope and worked day and night to make the miracle possible.”
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While more details will surface on the children and how they survived 40 days in the jungle on their own, here is what we know about the situation right now.
How are the 4 missing Colombian children doing now?
Colombian officials said on Friday that the children were transported to a Bogota, Colombia hospital to be checked out, The Associated Press reported. Petro said he hopes to speak with the children on Saturday.
Details have not yet been shared on how specifically the siblings survived for the 40 days in the jungle, but the children are a part of an Indigenous group that lives in that region of the jungle, AP reported.
The City Paper Bogota reported the children suffered from dehydration and were first transported to San José del Guaviare in central Colombia, where they were to be treated by military paramedics. The children, whose names are Lesly, Soleiny, Tien and Cristin – listed by age – have mosquito bites and show signs of exhaustion, the outlet said.
The Institute of Family Welfare (ICBF), the country’s child protection agency, released a statement saying it had been informed that the children were “alive and in good health,” The Washington Post reported.
How did the Colombian children go missing?
The children went missing after a plane crash that happened early May 1, when a Cessna single-engine propeller plane that had six passengers aboard it as well as a pilot declared an emergency due to an engine failure on the plane.
After the emergency declaration, the aircraft fell off of the radar and the search for the plane and the passengers began. A search team discovered the plane and recovered the bodies of three adults in the rainforest on May 16, but could not locate the children.
Who are the children and where were they last seen?
The four siblings were on the plane with their mother and the group was traveling from the Amazonian village of Araracuara to San José del Guaviare in central Colombia, about 240 miles south of Bogota, when it crashed. The children are members of the Huitoto people, an Indigenous group in southeastern Colombia, and the older children of the siblings had some jungle survival skills officials said.
Earlier in May, speculation began about the childrens’ location and Petro tweeted on May 18 that the children had been successfully located. Petro ultimately deleted the message after stating he was misinformed on the status of the search and rescue mission by another government agency.
How was the search for the 4 missing children conducted?
After finding the bodies of the three adults on the plane, Colombia sent 150 soldiers with dogs into the area of the rainforest. There were also multiple volunteers from various Indigenous tribes in the area who aided in the search for the children.
In more dense parts of the jungle, soldiers dropped food from helicopters to help the children survive, the AP reported. Multiple planes also flew over the jungle and fired flares to help people searching for the children in the jungle at night. There were also speakers that played a message from the children’s grandmother, who encouraged them to stay put as opposed to continuously moving.
As the days searching for the children continued, the soldiers found multiple items that made them think the siblings were still alive in the jungle including footprints, diapers, a baby bottle, and chewed fruit.
“We have a 100% expectation of finding them alive,” Gen. Pedro Sánchez, commander of the Joint Command of Special Operations, told The Associated Press more than a week ago. “It’s not like finding a needle in a haystack, it’s like finding a tiny flea in a huge rug that moves in unpredictable directions.”
Ultimately, the children were found by a rescue dog first, Petro said. Details have not been released on how far the children wandered from the crash site, but rescue crews searched in a 3-mile radius of the site.
The children were taken out of the jungle by helicopter. Petro said locating the children was the combined efforts of the Indigenous communities and the Colombian military, but the siblings ultimately kept themselves alive for the 40 days.
“They were alone. It was them who achieved a great exemplary survival. It will become history,” Petro said. “These children are today, the children of peace and the children of Colombia. A great gift to Colombia. Overall, this is a gift from life, which is this meant, our children being taken care of by the jungle.”
The children’s survival is a sign of a “knowledge and relationship with the natural environment of life,” which is “learned from the mother’s womb and practiced from a very early age,” the Organization of the Indigenous Peoples of the Colombian Amazon in a statement on Twitter, thanking all those who assisted in the rescue.
Contributing: The Associated Press.
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