emergencies
New footprints of children in the Colombian jungle
The wreck of the crashed Cessna C206 in the rainforest in the Colombian state of Caqueta. photo
© -/Colombia’s Armed Forces Press Office/dpa
When a Cessna 206 crashes, three adult passengers die – three children could still live. Soldiers find footprints, food, and a makeshift shelter built from leaves and branches.
Nearly a month after a small plane crashed in the Colombian rainforest, soldiers have uncovered more evidence while searching for four missing children. The search teams had noticed broken branches and opened food packages, said a military spokesman on the Caracol television station yesterday (local time).
Soldiers had previously found a footprint that could have come from a 13-year-old girl who is one of the four missing siblings. “We have to find them,” General Pedro Arnulfo Sánchez, commander of the “Operation Hope” search operation, said in a broken voice on RCN television.
The children, aged 13, 9 and 4 years and one year old, crashed on May 1 with a Cessna 206 propeller plane in the Caquetá department in the south of the country. Her mother, the pilot and an indigenous leader died in the accident. While looking for the children, the soldiers found shoes, diapers, a baby bottle, a makeshift shelter made of leaves and branches, and half-eaten fruit. However, the rainforest in the region is very dense, which makes the search for the missing people much more difficult.
The children belong to an indigenous community and, according to media reports, were traveling 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.