Four children who vanished after a plane crashed in the Colombian Amazon have been found alive.
The light aircraft, carrying three adults and four indigenous children, crashed on May 1 in dense jungle due to engine failure. The bodies of the three adults were found in the plane.
The Colombia military rescued the kids more than a month after exhaustive searches were launched.
Colombian President Gustav Petro said: “A joy for the whole country! The four children who were lost in the Colombian jungle appeared alive.”
Officials had previously said they were confident the children were alive after finding footprints belonging to them.
Searchers had also found a makeshift shelter and items belonging to the children - aged 13, nine, four and 11 months.
More than 100 members of Colombia’s special forces and over 70 indigenous people from the area had joined the search.
Some soldiers walked almost 1,000 miles, General Sánchez said, in the quest to find the children.
They’d found a baby’s bottle, some towels, used nappies, scissors and footprints relatively close to the scene of the accident. Rescuers with search dogs also found discarded fruit and improvised shelters made with jungle vegetation.
The group of four children were travelling with their mother from the Amazonian village of Araracuara to San Jose del Guaviare when the plane crashed.
They are members of the Huitoto people. Officials said the oldest children in the group had some knowledge of how to survive in the rainforest.
“The jungle saved them,” Mr Petro said. “They are children of the jungle, and now they are also children of Colombia.”
