The four indigenous brothers rescued after wandering lost for 40 days through the Colombian jungle after surviving a plane crash received medical attention at a Bogotá hospital on Saturday, where they arrived early Saturday morning to be evaluated.
President Gustavo Petro is scheduled to visit the minors in the morning at the Military Hospital, which was guarded by police and military forces.
The announcement of the rescue on Friday brought a happy ending to an adventure that had many Colombians on edge, a journey with ups and downs as rescuers frantically combed the jungle in search of the children.
Damaris Mucutuy, aunt of the minors, in a telephone interview with Radio Blue de Colombia on Saturday, assured that “the children are fine” despite being found with signs of dehydration and insect bites.
Regarding Leslie, the oldest girl, she stated that she has “a blow to the head”, but that “they are very well”. The woman arrived with other relatives of the children at the hospital at dawn. Teams of psychologists cared for the little brothers and also the relatives, she said.
On Friday, the four infants were located alive, in a fact that was described by the Colombian president as an “example of survival”, of which the details are still unknown.
On May 1, the Cesna C206 plane in which they were traveling with their mother crashed in the Colombian Amazon, after the pilot reported an engine failure. Both he and the mother of the minors and another adult lost their lives. The aircraft was on the Araracuara – San José del Guaviare route.
Since then, the search has been incessant. The rescue units found the remains of the plane two weeks after the mishap but not the minors.
Lesly Mucutuy, 13 years old; Soleiny Mucutuy, 9 years old; She has Noriel Ronoque Mucutuy, 4 years old; and Cristin Neriman Ranoque Mucutuy, an 11-month-old baby, have since continued on a journey of more than a month in the midst of the harshness of the jungle and its dangers.
During the search actions to comb the area, objects and human footprints were found that encouraged and gave hope to the search groups made up of at least 150 soldiers and dozens of indigenous people from the communities who joined as volunteers, giving the operation its name “Hope ”.
The days passed amid the limitations that the weather, the climate and the wildness of the area imposed on the team accompanied by about ten dogs trained to search for people.
The military dropped food from the air and broadcast messages with megaphones with the voice of the minors’ grandmother asking them to stay in one place.
A video released about the rescue of indigenous children shows the moment in which military personnel extract them from the jungle area through ropes and are taken by helicopter.
On May 17, an announcement by President Petro on Twitter indicating for the first time that the children had been found was later denied by the head of state himself, who acknowledged the mistake and apologized.
“The mother jungle returned them,” Petro said the day before. “They are children of the jungle and now they are children of Colombia.”
