The small aircraft fell off radar a short time later and a frantic search for survivors began.
The three adults were killed, and their bodies were found in the area.
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 adults, but the small children were nowhere to be found.
Sensing they could be alive, Colombia’s army stepped up the hunt for the children and flew 150 soldiers with dogs into the area to track the group of four siblings. Dozens of volunteers from Indigenous tribes also helped search.
The military today tweeted pictures showing a group of soldiers and volunteers posing with the children, who were wrapped in thermal blankets. One of the soldiers held a bottle to the smallest child’s lips.
“The union of our efforts made this possible” Colombia’s military command wrote on its Twitter account.
Evidence of belongings found away from the crash site and a simple shelter gave hope to search teams in mid-May.
“We think that the children who were aboard the plane are alive. We have found traces at a different location, away from the crash site, and a place where they may have sheltered,” Colonel Juan José López told the BBC at the time.
During the search, in an area where visibility is greatly limited by mist and thick folliage, soldiers on helicopters dropped boxes of food into the jungle, hoping that it would help sustain the children.
Planes flying over the jungle fired flares to help search crews on the ground at night, and rescuers used megaphones that blasted a message recorded by the siblings’ grandmother, telling them to stay in one place.
Rumors also emerged about the childrens’ wheareabouts and on May 18, President Petro tweeted that the children had been found.
He then deleted the message, claiming he had been misinformed by a government agency.
The group of four children had been travelling with their mother from the Amazonian village of Araracuara to San Jose del Guaviare, a small city on the edge of the Amazon rainforest.
They are members of the Huitoto people, and officials said the oldest children in the group, had some knowledge of how to survive in the rainforest.’
After confirming the children had been rescued, the president said that for a while he had believed the children were rescued by one of the nomadic tribes that still roam the remote swath of the jungle where the plane fell and have little contact with authorities.
But Petro added that the children were first found by one of the rescue dogs that soldiers took into the jungle.
“The jungle saved them” Petro said.
“They are children of the jungle, and now they are also children of Colombia.”
- AP
