four Columbian children found alive two weeks after plane crash
Written by Samson Ojeniran on May 18, 2023
In Colombia, four children aged 13, 9 and 4 years, as well as an 11-month-old baby stuck in a jungle following a plane crash have been found alive.
The government’s child welfare agency, ICBF, said it had received information “from the field” that the children had been found in good health.
The Cessna 206 light aircraft they had been in was flying from Araracuara, deep in the Amazon jungle in southern Colombia, to San José del Guaviare, when it disappeared in the morning of 1 May.
The plane was finally located on Monday, two weeks after it had disappeared; with the bodies of the pilot, co-pilot and 33-year-old Magdalena Mucutuy, the mother of the four children at the crash site in Caquetá province.
The search teams did not see the children but found clues indicating the children, who are from the Huitoto indigenous group, survived the crash.
Fearing that the children were wandering ever deeper into the jungle, the military deployed helicopters which played a recorded message from their grandmother in the Huitoto language urging them to stay put.
Colombia’s Institute for Child Welfare told Colombia’s president it had received reports “from the field” that the children had been found by locals.
The children’s father had earlier said that he was not giving up hope. He told Caracol Radio that his sister had once been lost in the forest for a month and managed to return.
It is thought that the Huitoto people’s knowledge of fruits and jungle survival skills will have given the young children a better chance of surviving the ordeal.
