Four children, including an 11-month-old baby, from an indigenous community in Colombia survived a plane crash that occurred more than two weeks ago and were found alive, President Gustavo Petro said on Wednesday.
Declaring "joy for the country," Petro wrote on Twitter that the children were found after "arduous search efforts" by the military.
Early in the morning of May 1, the plane carrying seven people between Araracuara, in Amazonas province, and San Jose del Guaviare, a city in Guaviare province, had suffered an engine failure.
How did the children survive?
While the three adults, including the pilot, died in the plane crash — the four children aged 13, 9 and 4, as well as the 11-month-old baby, survived the impact.
The bodies of the adults were found by the rescuers inside the plane on Monday and Tuesday.
Preliminary information revealed that the children, of the Huitoto community, had survived and ventured into the forest. They survived on fruits and built shelters using sticks and branches that were discovered by the rescue personnel.
On Wednesday, armed forces said that the rescue efforts were intensified when remnants of their "shelter built in an improvised way with sticks and branches," were found.
Photographs released by the armed forces showed scissors and a hair tie used by the children and lying in the jungle.
The rescue operation
Huge trees that can grow as tall as 40 meters (131 feet), fear of wild animals and heavy rainfall made the "Operation Hope" search difficult.
The rescue operation was conducted in the dense Amazon jungle of Colombia's Caqueta province by joint efforts of the military, firefighters and civil aviation authority officials.
The region where the plane crashed has very few roads and is difficult to access by rivers as well, so air travel is commonly used.
More than 100 soldiers along with sniffer dogs were deployed for the search operation.
One of the three helicopters used in the search operation hovered over the jungle and played a recorded message from the children's grandmother telling them to stop moving in the jungle.