Four indigenous children who survived a plane crash in the Amazon that killed three adults, bravely roamed the jungle for 40 days and were found alive by Colombian soldiers not only captivated the nation, but also their It brought a happy ending to a search and rescue story that also raised questions about life. extraordinary survival.

After days of ups and downs as search parties scrambled through the rainforest to search for Hoito youngsters aged 13, 9 and 4 years and 11 months, officials in the South American country said Friday , announced the rescue.

The children were treated at a hospital in the capital Bogota on Saturday, but authorities have yet to explain how the brothers endured solitary times in a remote area. Earlier, officials said the oldest children had some knowledge of how to survive in the rainforest.

After returning from Cuba, President Gustavo Petro celebrated the news and signed a ceasefire with representatives of the National Liberation Army rebels. He visited his children on Saturday.

Petro called them “surviving examples” and predicted their stories “will go down in history”.

“The children are fine,” the children’s aunt, Damaris Muktui, told the radio station despite suffering from dehydration and insect bites. Muktui, who arrived at the hospital at dawn with other family members, said her children were provided with mental health services.

Defense Minister Iván Velázquez told reporters on Saturday that the children were being hydrated and were not yet able to eat. “But in general, the children’s condition is acceptable,” he said.

Air Force video showed a helicopter using a string to pull the youths out after they failed to land in the dense rainforest where they were found. The military tweeted a photo on Friday of a group of soldiers and volunteers posing with children wrapped in thermal blankets. One of the soldiers put the bottle to the lips of the smallest child.

General Pedro Sánchez, who was in charge of the rescue effort, said the children were found in a small clearing three miles from the crash site. Rescue teams passed within about 160 feet of where the children were found on several occasions, he said, but missed them.

“The minor team was already very weak,” Sanchez said. “And indeed, their strength was only enough to breathe, or reach and nourish a small fruit, or drink a drop of water in the jungle.”

The children’s uncle, Fidencio Valencia, told reporters outside the hospital that the survivors were happy to see their families dealing with the situation “on a daily basis.”

“When the plane crashed, they escaped [of the wreckage] Farinha, that’s how they survived,” Valencia said of the cassava flour people eat in the Amazon region. “When the farinha was gone, they started eating the seeds.”

The crash occurred in the early hours of May 1, when a Cessna single-engine propeller plane carrying six passengers and a pilot declared a state of emergency due to engine failure.

The small plane quickly went off radar and a desperate search for survivors began. Two weeks after the crash, on May 16, a search team found the plane in dense rainforest and recovered the bodies of the three adults on board, but the young children were nowhere to be found. Snakes, mosquitoes and other animals abound in this area.

The Colombian military stepped up the search and sent 150 soldiers with dogs to the scene. Dozens of indigenous volunteers also helped in the search.

During the search, in an area where visibility was severely restricted by fog and thick foliage, soldiers in helicopters dropped crates of food into the jungle in hopes of saving the lives of children. Planes flying over the jungle fired flares to aid in the nighttime search for ground crew, while rescuers used speakers to play messages recorded by the brothers’ grandmothers, telling them to stay in one place. told to

Rumors also surfaced about the whereabouts of the children, with the president tweeting on May 18 that the children had been found. He then deleted the message, claiming he had been misinformed by a government agency.

A group of four children were traveling with their mother from the Amazonian village of Araraquara to San Jose del Guaviare when the plane crashed.

Petro said Friday that the children were first found by one of the rescue dogs taken into the jungle by soldiers. For some time, he added, he believed the children had been rescued by one of the nomadic tribes, who still roam the remote stretches of jungle where the plane crashed and had little contact with the authorities.

As the search progressed, the soldiers found small clues in the jungle that suggested the children were alive. Among them were human bite marks, baby bottles, diapers and pieces of fruit.

“The jungle saved them,” Petro said. “They are children of the jungle, but now they are also children of Colombia.”