The four Huitoto Indigenous children who were rescued from the jungles of Amazon, 40 days after a small Cessna 206 plane in which they were traveling with their mother, the pilot and another adult crashed killing all adults, said “I’m hungry” and “my mom is dead” when they first met the rescuers.
The children who had been missing for 40 days in the dense Amazon jungle were rescued and airlifted on Friday. The four children aged- 13, nine, five, and one were found by rescuers on Friday.
Interviewed on public broadcast channel RTVC, the Indigenous rescue team that found the children in the jungle recounted the first moments of the meeting. “The eldest daughter, Lesly, with the little one in her arms, ran towards me. Lesly said: ‘I’m hungry,'” said Nicolas Ordonez Gomes, one of the search and rescue crew.
“One of the two boys was lying down. He got up and said to me: ‘My mom is dead.'”
The oldest child has also said that their mother, was alive for four days after the crash. Manuel Ranoque, father of the two youngest children, told reporters outside the hospital Sunday that the oldest of the four siblings — 13-year-old Lesly Jacobombaire Mucutuy — had described to him how their mother was alive for about four days after the plane crashed on May 1 in the Colombian jungle.
During the TV interview the indigenous rescuer also said, “We immediately followed up with positive words, saying that we were friends, that we were sent by the family, the father, the uncle. That we were family!”
According to the rescuer, the boy only replied: “I want some bread and sausage.”
Two weeks after the crash, on May 16, a search team found the plane in a thick patch of the rainforest and recovered the bodies of the three adults on board, but the small children were nowhere to be found.
Soldiers on helicopters dropped boxes of food into the jungle, hoping that it would help sustain the children. Planes flying over the area fired flares to help search crews on the ground at night, and rescuers used speakers that blasted a message recorded by the siblings’ grandmother telling them to stay in one place.
Colombia’s army sent 150 soldiers with dogs into the area, where mist and thick foliage greatly limited visibility. Dozens of volunteers from Indigenous tribes also joined the search.
The Colombian government, which is trying to end internal conflicts in the country, has highlighted the joint work of the military and Indigenous communities to find the children.
(With agency inputs)
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Updated: 12 Jun 2023, 07:12 PM IST
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