Kanyi Okeke
Four children including an 11-month-old baby, have been rescued alive in the Amazon Forest in Colombia after their plane crashed over two weeks ago while flying from a jungle location to San Jose del Guaviare, one of the main cities in Colombia’s Amazon rainforest.
Columbian President Gustavo Petro while announcing the rescue said it’s “joy for the country.”
Over 100 soldiers were deployed with sniffer dogs to search for the children who were traveling with their mother in the airplane that crashed on May 1st 2023.
Their mother and two other people including the pilot died in the crash.
The children aged 13, nine and four-year-old – were wandering through the jungle in the southern Caqueta department since the crash.
READ: Mother and Baby Found Alive 5 Days After Columbia Plane Crashed in the Jungle
Three helicopters were dispatched to fly over the sky and blast a recorded message from the children’s grandmother in their native Huitoto language telling them to stop moving through the jungle.
The cause of the plane crash has not been released however, the pilot had reported problems with the engine just minutes before the airplane disappeared from radars according to Colombia’s disaster response body.
It’s not exactly known how the kids survived alone in the jungle.
The Soldiers had intensified their search efforts after some of them came across a “shelter built in an improvised way with sticks and branches,” which lead them to believe there were survivors.
Photos released by the Columbian military show scissors, shoes, and hair ties on tree branches. A baby’s drinking bottle and half-eaten pieces of fruit was also spotted.
Earlier in the week, the bodies of Ranoque Mucutuy, the mother of the four children, the pilot and the other passenger were recovered.
Avianline Charters, owner of the crashed aircraft said the children were found and were transported by boat downriver and that they were all alive. However, the company also said that “there has been no official confirmation” that the children were completely out of danger, and thunderstorms in the area still posed a risk to them reaching safety.
READ: VIDEO of Columbian President Wetting His Trousers While Giving Election Speech
