More than a month after a small plane crashed in the Colombian rainforest, four surviving children have been rescued from the jungle. A rescue dog led the helpers to the siblings, President Petro said.
“Lesly, I am your grandmother and I would like to ask you: stay where you are, because they are looking for you, the soldiers are looking for you!” This message from the grandmother Fatima Valencia of the four missing children was played over and over again over the jungle, by helicopter, with the loudspeaker and in the indigenous mother tongue of the four siblings.
For this purpose, tracking dogs and satellite images were used. More than 160 volunteers and helpers from indigenous communities combed the impassable Amazon region. After 40 days of desperate searching, hoping and fearing, the news no one dared to believe: “We would like to share the joy of this true miracle with the Colombian people: the rescue of four minors, all alive, thanks to a tireless and persistent search “said Defense Minister Ivan Velsaquez.
There was a photo to confirm it: it shows soldiers with three emaciated children and a baby in their arms – it is just one year old, the oldest of the four children, Lesly, is 13.
The Colombian military released this picture of the rescued children.
Adult occupants did not survive the crash
That the four survived is an absolute miracle. On May 1st, together with their mother, the pilot and a community leader, they crashed in a Cessna 206 propeller plane over the dense Amazon rainforest – the three adult occupants did not survive the accident. The children, who set off alone into the impassable jungle, were different.
“Example of survival will go down in history”
“They were alone, but they set an example of survival that will go down in history. So today these children are the children of peace, the children of Colombia,” declared President Gustavo Petro. He had returned from peace talks in Cuba the same day. There he was able to announce a ceasefire with the left-wing guerrilla organization ELN. “The cooperation between the armed forces and the indigenous people, who of course know the jungle much better than we do, was very effective. And shows what we can achieve as a country when we forge alliances.”
The children belong to the indigenous Witoto people. Having grown up in the Amazon region, their knowledge of the forest has certainly helped them survive. The search party, consisting of around 160 soldiers and indigenous helpers, found an emergency shelter made of leaves and branches as well as half-eaten fruit. But making progress in the impassable region was difficult, the jungle is very dense. In addition, it rains almost non-stop.
The children’s father wanted to bring the family to safety
In addition to wild animals such as snakes and jaguars, criminal gangs working together with drug cartels are also active in the area. Because there is still violence in many areas of Colombia – even six years after the peace agreement with the country’s largest guerrilla, the FARC.
According to media reports, the children only sat on the plane because the father wanted to bring the family to the capital Bogota and thus to safety. Because he himself had repeatedly received threats from so-called FARC dissidents, a splinter group of guerrillas that never surrendered their weapons. Indigenous peoples, social activists and environmentalists in particular are repeatedly targeted by criminal gangs.