After 17 days wandering in the Colombian Amazon, eating jungle fruits and at the mercy of wild animals, four indigenous children who were missing after a plane crash were found alive this Wednesday by rescuers.
These are three children ages 13, 9 and 4 and an 11-month-old baby who have been missing since May 1, when the aircraft they were traveling in crashed apparently due to a mechanical failure.
“After arduous search efforts by our Military Forces, we have found alive the 4 children who had disappeared due to the plane crash (…) A joy for the country”indicated the president Gustavo Petro On twitter.
Led by the military, the search efforts ended with a balance of three deaths, including the pilot and the mother of the four brothers from the Huitoto ethnic group.
More than 100 soldiers with tracking dogs followed the trail of minors and they were walking through the jungle between the departments of Caquetá, where the plane was left with the front part destroyed, and Guaviare, both in the south of the country.
Petro did not detail where the children were rescued nor how many kilometers they managed to cover while they were lost.
The soldiers had found a “makeshift shelter made of sticks and branches”, so they suspected there was at least one survivor.
Some scissors, hair ties, shoes, clothes and a bottle located in the middle of branches of the jungle served as an indication for the uniformed officers.
They also found “bitten fruits of the jungle,” Germán Camargo, director of Civil Defense in the department of Meta, told AFP, from where the rescue and extraction of the bodies of the pilot and two passengers who were located in the department of Caqueta.
Operation Hope
Gigantic trees up to 40 meters, wild animals and heavy rain made the search difficult. The Air Force joined the so-called “Operation Hope” with three helicopters that flew over the dense jungle for days.
One of them carried a speaker “capable of covering an area of about 1,500 meters” with a message recorded by the children’s grandmother. In the Huitoto language, the woman told her grandchildren that they were looking for them and asked them not to continue advancing through the jungle.
The authorities have not reported the reasons for the flight of the aboriginal family. According to the local press, the seventh passenger was a leader of that community.
In this region of difficult access by river and without highways, the inhabitants usually travel in private flights.
According to the Indigenous Organization of Colombia (ONIC), the Huitotos live in “harmony” with the hostile conditions of the Amazon and preserve traditions such as hunting, fishing and gathering wild fruits.
The pilot reported problems with the aircraft’s engine minutes before the accident, according to the official disaster response body.
Source: Ambito
