![]() He then deleted the message, claiming he had been misinformed by a government agency. Rumours initially emerged about the children’s whereabouts on 18 May, when Petro tweeted that the children had been found. ![]() I don’t know how to thank them, because the word ‘thank you’ is not enough,” Narcizo Mucutuy, the children’s grandfather, told Caracol TV station. “I thank the president for his help and the Indigenous people who collaborated in the search for our children. An uncle and their grandparents are among relatives now waiting to be reunited with the children. The children were found with rags wrapped around their feet, to protect them as they moved through the muddy forest floor, and rescuers had to winch them up to helicopters as the vegetation was too dense for aircraft to land.Īfter their initial helicopter evacuation to the town of San José del Guaviare, the children were taken on a military medical plane to Bogotá, where four ambulances were waiting to take them to hospital for specialist care. Photograph: Colombian army/AFP/Getty Images If someone is separated, the forest swallows them up,” Sanchez said.Ī rescue dog is shown a pair of scissors found in the forest in Caquetá province on 17 May during the search for the children. In virgin forest, with trees 40 or 50 metres high, where the sun barely reaches the forest floor, a man can lose himself within 20 or 30 metres. ![]() Sanchez said rescue teams had covered more than 2,600km (1,600 miles) on foot in the search for the children, and described the challenging conditions of their mission. In addition to evading jungle predators, the children had survived heavy storms, and the area also hosts armed groups. “They would have needed to draw on ancestral knowledge, in order to survive.” “This is a virgin forest, thick and dangerous,” John Moreno, an Indigenous leader from nearby Vaupés, told local media outlet Cambio. The education the children got from their grandmother, a respected elder in the Araracuara indigenous territory, was almost certainly vital to their survival. “They’ve given us an example of total survival that will go down in history,” said Colombia’s president, Gustavo Petro, calling it “a joy for the whole country”. Colombian soldiers with the child survivors of a Cessna 206 plane that crashed on 1 May in the jungle.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |