BOGOTA—More than five weeks after the plane carrying them crashed in dense forest, four youngsters from an Indigenous village in Colombia were discovered alive in the country's south on Friday, according to Gustavo Petro, Colombia's president.
The military located the siblings close to the spot where the little plane had fallen, which is the boundary between the provinces of Caqueta and Guaviare in Colombia.
During the early hours of May 1, the Cessna 206 aircraft, which was transporting seven persons, had engine failure while flying between Araracuara, in the Amazonas region, and San Jose del Guaviare, a city in the Guaviare province.
The corpses of three persons who perished in the disaster, including the pilot and the children's mother Magdalena Mucutuy, were discovered inside the aircraft. The four siblings, who are now 13, 9, 4, and a 12-month-old infant, all survived the collision.
The grandpa of the three girls and one boy, Narcizo Mucutuy, told reporters that he was overjoyed to hear that they had been saved.
“A joy for the whole country! The four children who were lost … in the Colombian jungle appeared alive,” Petro said in a message via Twitter.
Petro posted on Twitter on May 17 that children had been discovered, but afterwards removed the post, claiming the information was unsubstantiated.
“They were together, they are weak, let’s let the doctors assess them. They found them, it makes me very happy,” Petro told journalists on Friday, adding the children had defended themselves alone in the middle of the jungle.
Rescuers had earlier discovered abandoned fruit that the kids had eaten for survival as well as makeshift shelters fashioned of wild vegetation with the help of search dogs.
The army and air force of Colombia's aircraft engaged in the rescue efforts.
