Bogota. Four children who went missing after a plane crash in Colombia 40 days ago have been found safe in the Amazon jungle. President Gustavo Petro gave this information on Saturday.
Speaking to reporters after returning to Bogota from Cuba, Petro said the massive search operation for the missing children was over. He said rescuers managed to find the children after 40 days of hard work. and these children are now under medical supervision. Petro went to Cuba to sign a ceasefire agreement with representatives of the rebel National Liberation Army.
He said that these children “surviving for 40 days even in such extreme conditions is nothing short of a miracle” and their story “will be recorded in the pages of history”. Petro did not share any details on how they survived. The four children were among six passengers on board the single-engine Cessna plane that crashed on May 1 due to engine failure. The plane had lost radar contact and the government launched a massive search operation to rescue the passengers.
Rescuers found the wreckage of the plane on May 16 in the dense jungles of the Amazon during a search operation. The bodies of the plane’s pilot and two adult passengers were also recovered from the wreckage, but the four children aboard could not be traced. Subsequently, the Colombian military launched a search for children aged four, nine, 11 and 13. For this, he sent 150 of his soldiers to the jungle with sniffer dogs. Dozens of members of tribal communities also cooperated in the search operation.
On Friday, the army shared some pictures on Twitter, in which these children wrapped in blankets were seen with soldiers and tribal volunteers. A picture shows a soldier bottle-feeding the youngest of these children. Later, the Air Force tweeted a video in which soldiers are seen loading the children into a helicopter. It wrote that the helicopter took the children to San Jose del Guaviare. During the search operation, the army dropped food packets at different places in the jungle in the hope that these children would be able to feed and survive.
Not only this, the soldiers played a recorded message by the grandmother of the four children, in which she asked them to stick together and not lose heart. During the search, the rescuers found small clues in the forest, such as the children’s footprints. They found a bottle of milk, diapers and pieces of fruit, which led them to believe that the children were still alive. “The forest saved them (the children),” Petro said. They are the children of the jungle and now they are the children of all of Colombia.
PC: Amrit Vichar
Colombia Plane Crash
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