Air-crash kids found in Colombia jungle

Four siblings, including an infant, were found alive and well in the Colombian jungle on Friday — a remarkable 40 days after the plane in which they were traveling crashed, killing every adult on board, authorities said.

The miraculous ending to the saga that has captivated the world was shared by President Gustavo Petro, who told reporters Friday the children’s incredible tale of survival “will remain in history.”

The scrappy youngsters were ultimately located in the Amazon rainforest by one of the rescue dogs handled by soldiers with the Colombian army who joined the search weeks ago.

“The jungle saved them,” Petro said Friday. “They are children of the jungle, and now they are also children of Colombia.”

40 days of survival

The children — ages 13, 9, 4, and 11 months — are members of the Huitoto people who had been traveling with their mother from the Amazonian village of Araracuara to San Jose del Guaviare when their Cessna single-engine propeller plane crashed into the dense jungle on May 1.

The mother, another adult and the pilot died in the wreckage, which was located by a search team on May 16.

While the bodies of the three adult passengers were located, the children were nowhere to be found. Soon after, Colombia’s army joined the search-and-rescue operation, providing 150 soldiers with dogs to locate the kids.

During the intense search through thick foliage and grueling conditions, soldiers dropped boxes of food into the forest for the siblings’ survival.

Rescuers, including volunteers from Indigenous tribes, used megaphones to play a recorded message from the children’s grandmother imploring the quartet to stay in one place.

Officials said the oldest of the four children possessed some knowledge of how to survive in the rainforest.

Two days after the plane was recovered, it was falsely reported that the siblings had been found after Petro tweeted that was the case. But the president later said he got erroneous information from a government agency and he deleted the social-media post.

After the children were rescued Friday, they were wrapped up in thermal blankets and tended to by the soldiers and volunteers, according to photos tweeted out by the military.

Another picture shows one of the soldiers holding a bottle to the lips of one child.

“The union of our efforts made this possible” Colombia’s military command posted on its Twitter account.