The four Indigenous children who survived 40 days in the Amazon jungle after their plane crashed were recovering in a military hospital in Colombia, as new details of their harrowing story emerged in a country still mesmerised by their saga.
The kids, aged 13, 9, 4 and 11 months, are expected to remain for at least two weeks in a hospital receiving treatment after their rescue, but some are already speaking and wanting to do more more than lying on a bed, according to family members.
Manuel Ranoque, father of the two youngest children, told reporters outside the hospital that the oldest of the four surviving children — 13-year-old Lesly Jacobombaire Mucutuy — told him their mother was alive for about four days after the plane crashed on May 1 in the Colombian jungle.
Ranoque said before she died, the mother likely would have told them to “go away”, apparently asking them to leave the wreckage site to survive. He provided no more details.
Fidencio Valencia, a child’s uncle, told media outlet Noticias Caracol the children were starting to talk and one of them said they hid in tree trunks to protect themselves in a jungle area filled with snakes, animals and mosquitoes. He said they were exhausted.
“They at least are already eating, a little, but they are eating,” he said after visiting them at the military hospital in Bogota, Colombia.
A day earlier, Defence Minister Iván Velásquez had said the children were being re-hydrated and couldn’t eat food yet.
The children were travelling with their mother from the Amazonian village of Araracuara to San Jose del Guaviare when the plane went down.
The Cessna single-engine propeller plane was carrying three adults and the four children when the pilot declared an emergency due to engine failure. The small aircraft fell off the radar a short time later and a search for survivors began.
Dairo Juvenal Mucutuy, another uncle, told local media that one of kids said he wanted to start walking.
FULL STORY: https://www.1news.co.nz/2023/06/12/more-harrowing-details-emerge-of-missing-amazon-kids-ordeal/
