Colombia: Children Reportedly Survived 16 Days in Jungle After Plane Crash
Colombian President Gustavo Petro says that there is no confirmation that four children who went missing after their plane crashed in the jungle more than two weeks ago have been rescued. Search teams have found items they think belong to the children in the jungle as well as a makeshift shelter. This has led them to believe the children have been wandering alone through the rainforest since the crash.
But Mr Petro said information about their rescue could not be verified. The children – who range in age from between 13 years to 11 months – were on board a small plane along with their mother, a pilot and a co-pilot when it crashed on 1 May. The adults all died in the crash. News about the alleged rescue of the children was broken by the president himself on Wednesday afternoon local time when he tweeted that they had been found “after arduous search efforts”.
But less than 24 hours later, he deleted the tweet and shortly after wrote: “I have decided to delete the tweet because the information provided by the ICBF (Colombia’s child welfare agency) could not be confirmed. I am sorry about what happened. The armed forces and the indigenous communities will carry on with their tireless search in order to give the country the news it is hoping for.”
Colombia’s child welfare agency had earlier said that the president’s now-deleted tweet had been based on information it had provided. It said in a statement that it had received information “from the field” that the children had been found in good health.
Its director, Astrid Cáceres, told Colombian radio on Thursday morning that the information came from “reliable sources” and that the people who had contacted them had described the children’s appearance, which matched those of the missing children.
However, Ms Cáceres said that her agency had not yet been able to see the children and until such moment, the search effort would not be called off. The child welfare agency was not alone in saying that it had received information that the four children had been rescued.
A pilot said he had also been told the children had been found by indigenous people deep in the rainforest. Soldiers taking part in the search, however, said that they themselves had not yet been able to make contact with the children “due to the difficult meteorological conditions and the difficult terrain”.
The Cessna 206 light aircraft the children and their mother 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. Its pilot had earlier reported engine problemsAfter a huge search effort involving more than 100 soldiers, the plane was finally located on Monday, two weeks after it had disappeared.
