Colombia’s defense minister visits search team
The wreckage of the Cessna C206 that crashed in the Colombian jungle on May 18, 2023. photo
© -/Press Office of the Colombian Armed Forces via AP/dpa
Four children are still missing after a propeller plane crashed in the rainforest. An emergency shelter, half-eaten food and footprints give hope that they are still alive.
A month after a small plane crashed in the Colombian rainforest, soldiers and indigenous people in the south of the country are still searching for four missing children.
Defense Minister Iván Velásquez visited the Operation Hope command post in San Jose del Guaviare on Thursday and encouraged the search parties. “I hope that you will reach our goal soon and that we can say to the friends of the whole country: We found them,” he radioed to the teams in the jungle, as seen in a video released by the Defense Ministry. “We are proud of the determination and skills you have shown in this operation.”
On May 1, a Cessna 206 propeller plane crashed in the Caquetá department in the south of the country. The pilot, the children’s mother and an indigenous leader died in the accident. Since then, the four children aged 13, 9 and 4 have been searched for in the impassable region on the edge of the Amazon. Soldiers and indigenous people found shoes, diapers, a baby bottle, a shelter made of leaves and branches, half-eaten fruit and footprints. They assume the children are still alive.
The siblings belong to an indigenous community and, according to media reports, were on a plane with their mother to visit their father, who had fled the region after constant threats from armed groups. Their knowledge of the region may have helped them survive in the jungle after the crash.