After the miraculous rescue of four children who survived a plane crash and wandered for 40 days in the Amazon jungle in southeastern Colombia, the military announced Saturday that it will continue to search for Wilson’s dog, which went missing during the rescue operation. AFP.

“The search is not over. Our principle is that no one will be left behind,” the Colombian army said in a Twitter message.

“Soldiers are continuing their search for Wilson,” the statement added, along with a photo of the adorable six-year-old Belgian shepherd.

The dog became lost in the hostile and densely overgrown Amazon jungle in recent days while helping to search for four indigenous children, ages 13, 9, 4 and one, who had survived a plane crash.

Amazing survival

The children were found on Friday afternoon, exhausted but alive, and were repatriated overnight to Bogotá, where they were hospitalized.

Indigenous children, one just 11 months old, malnourished and riddled with insect bites, have managed to survive in Colombia’s Amazon jungle, one of the most inhospitable parts of the country, home to predators and armed groups.

“They gave us an example of total survival that will go down in history,” said Colombian President Gustavo Petro, declaring that saving the babies was “joy for the whole country!”.

Although they looked malnourished, the condition of the babies was not serious. Even the youngest of the siblings who celebrated his first birthday in the jungle.

They are believed to have survived on survival kits of food parachuted into the jungle by a search team, but the education they received from their grandmother may also have been vital, said John Moreno, an indigenous leader from the nearby town of Waupes.

“It’s a virgin forest, thick and dangerous… and they would use the knowledge they got in the community, the knowledge of the ancestors, to survive,” he told local newspaper Cambio.

On May 1, the children were flying aboard a Cessna 206 from San Jose de Guaviare to Araraquara in the Amazonas province when the pilot reported engine failure.

The wreckage of the plane was found two weeks later in the Amazon jungle, 175 km south of San Jose de Guaviare. Rescuers found only three bodies of adults, including the mother of the children.

Then “Operation “Hope” started, hundreds of soldiers and volunteers began to look for the four brothers.

In the end, 150 soldiers and 200 volunteers from the local indigenous communities were mobilized, as well as a team of 10 Belgian shepherds, covering an area of ​​more than 323 square kilometers.