BOGOTA - Exhausted but happy, four Indigenous children who had been missing for more than a month in the Colombian Amazon rainforest were reunited with their relatives on Saturday, in a happy ending to a nerve-racking saga that gripped the nation.
The siblings, who had been wandering alone in the jungle after surviving a small plane crash, were found after an intense rescue operation involving sniffer dogs, helicopters and aircraft. They were in “an acceptable" state of health, the government said.
The children were found on Friday in Caqueta province after weeks of searching by the military, Indigenous communities and others, and were initially treated by military medics.
Looking thin and frail, the children were transported by army medical plane to a military hospital in Bogota, according to AFP journalists at the scene.
Defence Minister Ivan Velasquez, who visited them in the hospital with President Gustavo Petro on Saturday, said they were recovering, but cannot yet eat solid food.
Petro said on Twitter the rescue was an example of different groups coming together for the common good.
"In general the boy and the girls are in an acceptable state. According to the medical reports they are out of danger," Velasquez said during a press conference after the visit.
The children are being hydrated and stabilised, he said.
Velasquez recognised the eldest of the siblings, a13-year-old girl, for her bravery.
The youngest of the children turned one while in the jungle, while her brother had his fifth birthday, he said. The other sister is nine.
The siblings have some insect bites and other minor injuries, army Major General Carlos Rincon said, but "life-threatening conditions are ruled out."
"It is thanks to her (the eldest sibling), her value and her leadership, that the three others were able to survive, with her care, her knowledge of the jungle," Velasquez said.
General Pedro Sanchez, who led the search operation, credited Indigenous people involved in the rescue effort with finding the children.
"We found the children: miracle, miracle, miracle!" he told reporters.
'A joy for the whole country'
On the morning of May 1, a Cessna 206 plane run by Avianline Charters left a jungle area known as Araracuara to head for San Jose del Guaviare, one of the main towns in the Colombian Amazon.
On board were the pilot, an Indigenous leader of the Huitoto community, as well as Magdalena Mucutui Valencia and her four children.
Minutes after starting the 350km flight over the jungle, the pilot reported engine problems and the plane disappeared from radar.
According to officials, the four Huitoto siblings boarded the plane with their mother to flee threats from members of an armed group.
The bodies of the pilot, the children's mother and a local Indigenous leader were all found at the crash site, where the plane sat almost vertical, hanging in the trees.
Members of the Huitoto Indigenous group, the children had been missing in the jungle since the crash.
"They are happy to see the family... they have all their senses," the children's grandfather, Fidencio Valencia, told reporters shortly after visiting them.
"They are children of the bush," Valencia said, adding that they know how to survive in the jungle.
They "survived at first by eating a little flour (which was on board the plane), then seeds," he said.
A massive search involving 160 soldiers and 70 Indigenous people with intimate knowledge of the jungle was launched after the crash, garnering global attention.
Army chief Helder Giraldo said rescuers had covered over 2 600km in total to locate the children. "Something that seemed impossible was achieved," Giraldo said on Twitter.
Petro posted a photo on Twitter showing several adults, some dressed in military fatigues, tending to the children as they sat on tarps in the jungle. One rescuer held a bottle to the mouth of the smallest child, whom he held in his arms.
Warrior spirit
The area is home to jaguars, snakes and other predators, as well as armed drug smuggling groups, but clues such as footprints, a diaper, and half-eaten fruit led authorities to believe they were on the right track.
Worried that the children would continue wandering and become ever more difficult to locate, the air force dumped 10 000 flyers into the forest with instructions in Spanish and the children's own Indigenous language, telling them to stay put.
The leaflets also included survival tips, and the military dropped food parcels and bottled water.
Rescuers had also been broadcasting a message recorded by the children's grandmother, urging them not to move.
According to the military, rescuers found the children about five kilometres west of the crash site.
The children's grandmother Fatima Valencia said 13-year-old Lesly kept her younger siblings safe with her "warrior" spirit.
But the search is not completely over: the army announced Saturday it would continue looking for Wilson, a rescue dog that went missing during the search.
"No one is left behind," the army said in a tweet containing a video of the six-year-old Belgian Shepherd Malinois.
The dog was key to finding some of the items left behind by the children in the jungle, and may have at one point -- while straying from the Army -- tagged along with the kids. They recounted a dog following them, but it's unclear if it was Wilson.
Alliance for the country
News of the children's rescue came as Petro returned home from Cuba, where he signed a six-month truce with Colombia's last active guerrilla group, the ELN.
On Friday, he praised "the effective coordination between the military and the Indigenous people" during the search, saying it was an "example of an alliance for the country to follow."
AFP and REUTERS