First it was said that four children had survived a plane crash and more than two weeks in the Amazon rainforest in Colombia. But now Colombian President Petro is retracting the success story.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro first spread a friend’s message, but now he’s rowing back: the military and the indigenous communities are still looking for the four children who have been missing for two weeks, he said on Twitter.
The President deleted a previously written tweet that the children had been found alive after a plane crash. The information provided by the Colombian family authority ICBF could not have been confirmed. “At this point there is no priority other than to continue searching until found,” Petro wrote on Twitter. “The life of the children is the most important thing.”
Improvised shelter made of sticks and twigs
More than a hundred soldiers with sniffer dogs and local indigenous people are searching for the minors of the Huitoto indigenous people. The children are eleven months and four, nine and 13 years old. Her mother and two other adults died in the plane crash. Soldiers found their bodies on Monday and Tuesday.
The Cessna disappeared from radar on May 1 while flying over the Amazon rainforest. At the time, she was near San José del Guaviare, one of the largest cities in the Colombian Amazon. The army posted photos of the wreck on Twitter. These show the wreck in the middle of the jungle, where it apparently fell vertically, nose first, to the ground.
The rescue workers assume that the children have been moving through the jungle in the southern department of Caqueta since the accident. According to the army, the search was intensified again on Wednesday morning after the helpers discovered “an improvised shelter made of sticks and twigs”. That indicated at least one survivor.
Scissors and a hair band were seen on the jungle floor in photos released by the armed forces. Rescue teams had found bitten fruit from the jungle at the crash site, which is why they hoped for survivors.