A remarkable story of survival has emerged from Colombia’s Amazon rainforest, where four Indigenous children have been found alive after spending more than a month in the wilderness following a plane crash that killed their mother and two pilots.
The children, who are siblings and range in age from one to 13 years old, were rescued by the military near the border of Caqueta and Guaviare provinces, close to where their small plane crashed on May 1.
The plane, a Cessna 206, was flying from Araracuara to San Jose del Guaviare when it experienced engine failure and issued a Mayday alert in the early hours of the morning.
The children were flown to Bogota on Saturday morning by an air ambulance and received medical care at a hospital. Their grandfather, Narcizo Mucutuy, expressed his joy and gratitude at their rescue and praised his grandchildren who were lost in the Yari jungle.
The children belong to the Huitoto ethnic group, which is native to the Amazon region. Authorities said that the older children had some knowledge of how to find food and shelter in the rainforest, which helped them survive the harsh conditions and threats from wild animals.
