Four children who survived 40 days in the Colombian jungle after the plane they were on are “recovering satisfactorily”, reports AFP.

Leslie (13), Soleinee (9), Tien Noriel (5) and Christine (1) were found alive on Friday afternoon. They were left alone in the jungle after the Cessna 206 plane in which they were with their mother, pilot and relative crashed on May 1. Adults did not survive.

As of Saturday morning, the children are in a military hospital in Bogotá, where they were taken in “acceptable clinical condition.”

• “After two days of care, they are in a good mood, they have painted and drawn, they like to talk, they are in a very good mood,” Adriana Velázquez, deputy director of the Colombian Institute for the Defense of the Family (ICBF), said in a video sent to the media.

The two older sisters had a “peak fever” on Monday and the 5-year-old “is under observation for possible food contamination,” ICBF director Astrid Caceres announced on radio station W.

He was so weak that he could not walk

Thien Noriel, the only boy, was so weak when he was found that he could not walk, according to indigenous people who had first contact with the children on Friday.

• “The child is still in intermediate treatment, not because of a serious condition, but because he is being closely monitored because of his age,” Astrid Caceres said.
• “They were able to fall asleep again, which helped them a lot (…) Evolution follows predictions (…). The forecast is two to three weeks of hospitalization,” she emphasized.

The Colombian miracle

Malnourished and riddled with insect bites, indigenous children managed to survive 40 days in the Amazon jungle in Colombia, one of the most inhospitable parts of the country, home to predatory animals and armed groups.

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.
• “I’m hungry” and “mother is dead” – the first words four children addressed to their rescuers.

Two days after the miraculous rescue, Colombian public television showed footage of the emotional encounter in the jungle.

The pictures show four exhausted children, the youngest of whom is in the arms of a rescuer. “I found the children. Thank God,” says one of the rescuers, a member of the guard.

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. The search continues for Wilson, one of the dogs who went missing during the operation. (Source: News.ro)