Four children have shocked the world surviving 40 days in the Amazon after a plane crash that killed all adults on-board.
When rescuers finally found the Huitoto Indigenous children – aged 13, nine, five and one – on the weekend in the Colombian jungle, the eldest child ran towards them with the youngest in her arms.
“I’m hungry” and “my mum is dead” were the first words uttered by the children, according to the rescue group.
“The eldest daughter, Lesly, with the little one in her arms, ran towards me,” search and rescuer Nicolas Ordonez Gomes recalled in a television interview.
“Lesly said: ‘I’m hungry.’ One of the two boys was lying down. He got up and said to me: ‘My mum is dead.’”
“We immediately followed up with positive words, saying that we were friends, that we were sent by the family, the father, the uncle. That we were family!” Mr Gomes said.
The four children – Lesly, Soleiny, Tien Noriel and Cristin – are now recovering in a military hospital in Bogota, Colombia.
The eldest children, Lesly and Soleiny, have made crayon drawings of hero sniffer dog Wilson, who remains missing.
The six-year-old Belgian Shepherd rescue dog went missing during the search to save them and was key to finding some of the children’s items in the jungle.
It is believed Wilson could have even been the dog the children recalled following them while they were missing in the jungle.
Speaking to media outside the hospital, the children’s father said Lesly informed him that his wife died four days after the May 1 plane crash with the children by her side.
“Before she died, their mum told them something like, ‘You guys get out of here. You guys are going to see the kind of man your dad is, and he’s going to show you the same kind of great love that I have shown you,’” Manuel Miller Ranoque said.
The children’s mother Magdalena Mucutuy, an Indigenous leader, was one of three adults on-board the aircraft, which included another relative and the pilot, who both died.
They were travelling on a Cessna 206 light aircraft flying from Araracuara in Amazonas province to San José del Guaviare in Colombia.
The children’s remarkable survival has been credited to their upbringing and Lesly’s courage and leadership.
They ate seeds, fruits, roots and plants that they identified as edible.
The children’s aunt, Damarys Mucutui, believes a “survival game” two of the children played prepared them for the ordeal.
“When we played, we set up little camps,” she told Colombian news broadcaster Caracol Television.
“[Lesly] knew [there were] fruits she can’t eat because there are many poisonous fruits in the forest. And she knew how to take care of a baby.”
In the jungle there were threats of jaguars and snakes, and relentless downpours.
– with AFP