Four Children Survive After 40 Days In Columbian Jungle Following Plane Crash

Four children have been found alive after surviving a plane crash and spending weeks fending for themselves in Colombia’s Amazon jungle.

Colombia’s president said the rescue of the siblings, aged 13, nine, four and one, was “a joy for the whole country”.

The children’s mother and two pilots were killed when their light aircraft crashed in the jungle on 1 May.

The missing children became the focus of a huge rescue operation involving dozens of soldiers and local people

The siblings, Lesly, 13, Soleiny, nine, Tien Noriel, four, and baby Cristin who had his first birthday while in the rainforest, had been travelling in a light aircraft on May 1 when it crashed. The accident killed everyone else on board, the children’s mother Magdalena Mucutui Valencia, the pilot and an indigenous leader.

Officials in the South American country announced their rescue Friday, bringing a happy ending to a saga with highs and lows as searchers frantically combed through the rainforest hunting for the youngsters.

The children’s grandmother, Fatima Valencia, said after the rescue: ‘I am very grateful, and to mother earth as well, that they were set free.’

She explained the eldest of the four siblings was used to looking after the other three when their mother was at work, and this helped them survive in the jungle