The mother of the children rescued from the Colombian rainforest is said to have been alive after the plane crash more than a month ago. “My eldest daughter told me that her mother was four days alive,” the siblings’ father, Manuel Ranoque, said in a television interview. “Before she died, she may have said: Go.”
His children would not have told him much more about the time in the jungle. “It’s not easy to ask them. They haven’t eaten properly for 40 days, they haven’t slept well. I hope the children will recover well, then they can tell for themselves what happened.”
Search parties found the children on Friday after 40 days in the rainforest in southern Colombia. They were on May 1st with a propeller plane of the type Cessna 206 Crashed in Caquetá department. The pilot and an indigenous leader were killed in the accident; the children’s mother died four days after the crash, according to the eldest daughter. It was not until May 16 that members of the Colombian army’s special forces reached the wreckage of the plane and found the bodies of the three adults there.
The wreck of the crashed “Cessna 206”.
(Photo: Press Office of the Colombian Armed Forces /dpa)
According to a preliminary report from the aviation authority, the light aircraft collided with the treetops and then fell vertically to the ground. It is believed that the collision with the trees slowed the impact so much that there was little damage to the rear of the cabin, which is why the children survived. They are one, four, nine and 13 years old.
The children’s father reports death threats against him
The children initially consumed a supply of three kilograms of cassava flour from the plane. “In the days after the crash, they ate the flour they took with them,” CNN quoted a military spokesman as saying. At some point they ran out of supplies. After that, the children ate seeds, the AP news agency quoted relatives as saying from Fidencio Valencia. Astrid Cáceres, director of the Colombian Institute for Family Welfare, said the children also ate fruits from the jungle. This could include wild passion fruit or mangoes.
On Sunday her father also reported death threats from a splinter group of the guerrilla organization FARC. “The Carolina Ramírez front is looking for me to kill. There are threats against me, I’m a target for them,” Ranoque said. “They have economic interests, and if you don’t do what they say, you’re an enemy to them.”
The Carolina Ramírez Front is a splinter group of the Farc rebel group, which does not support the peace agreement signed in 2016. She is involved in drug trafficking and is said to have killed four minors in the south of the country. Ranoque’s children were with their mother on their way to see their father, who had fled the region due to constant threats from the faction.