Funnycave

Nearby public figures

Dike Miracle Chidi
440001

djakachiscoyeye_drummerboi02
Aba, Lagos

Berby picxy
Anabram

Callme River
Milan

Colombia Plane Crash: Four Children Found Alive In Amazon After 40 Days (Pictures)
Politics
Four children have been found alive after surviving a plane crash and spending weeks fending for themselves in Colombia's Amazon jungle.

Colombia's president said the rescue of the siblings, aged 13, nine, four and one, was "a joy for the whole country".The children's mother and two pilots were killed when their light aircraft crashed in the jungle on 1 May.

_130052291_4a94e355e06c9c99bb2f0c658192f6bbae2deb5a.jpg

The missing children became the focus of a massive rescue operation involving dozens of soldiers and local people. President Gustavo Petro said finding the group was a "magical day", adding: "They were alone; they achieved an example of total survival which will remain in history."

The children belong to the Huitoto indigenous group. Mr Petro shared a photograph of several military and Indigenous community members caring for the siblings, who had been missing for 40 days. One of the rescuers held a bottle up to the mouth of the minor child while another fed one of the other children from a mug with a spoon.

A video shared by Colombia's Ministry of Defence showed the children being air-lifted into a helicopter in the dark above the tall trees of the jungle. They have been flown to the nation's capital Bogota, where ambulances have taken them to the hospital for further medical treatment.

The children's grandmother, Fatima Valencia, said after their rescue: "I am very grateful, and to mother earth as well, that they were set free." She said the eldest of the four siblings was used to looking after the other three when their mother was at work and that this helped them survive in the jungle."She gave them flour and cassava bread, any fruit in the bush; they know what they must consume," Ms Valencia said in footage obtained by EVN.

The Cessna 206 aircraft the children and their mother had been travelling on before the crash flew from Araracuara, in Amazonas province, to San José del Guaviare when it issued a mayday alert due to engine failure.

The bodies of the three adults were found at the crash site by the army, but it appeared that the children had escaped the wreckage and wandered into the rainforest to find help. A massive search began, and in May, rescuers recovered items left behind by the children, including a child's drinking bottle, scissors, a hair tie and a makeshift shelter.

Small footprints were also discovered, which led search teams to believe the children were still alive in the rainforest, home to jaguars, snakes and other predators. The children's community members hoped that their knowledge of fruits and jungle survival skills would give them a better chance of remaining alive.

Indigenous people joined the search, and helicopters broadcast a message from the children's grandmother, recorded in the Huitoto language, urging them to stop moving to make locating them more accessible. After they were found, their grandfather, Fidencio Valencia, called on the authorities to move the children closer to their family in Villavicencio, roughly 130km (142 miles) from Bogota.
"I am asking the president as the highest authority, I am sorry to bother him, but it is my right and my duty; it is my blood, my family. I want to see the children here in Villavicencio," he said in an interview also obtained by EVN.

Earlier, Mr Petro said he had spoken to the children's grandfather. The president was criticised last month when a tweet on his account mistakenly announced that the children had been found. He erased the tweet the next day, saying that the information Colombia's child welfare agency had given his office could not be confirmed.