On May 1, a woman named Magdalena Mucutuy Valencia, a mother of 4, was traveling in a Cessna 206 type plane with her children, and a terrible accident occurred. Valencia, Hernando Murcia Morales, the pilot of the plane, and Herman Mendoza Hernandez, the leader of the Yarupari Indians, died in the accident. The children who managed to survive the accident had to fight for 40 days alone in the forest…
MYNET / FOREIGN NEWS
SEARCH TEAMS ARE MOBILIZED
After the children disappeared, more than a hundred Colombian special forces units and over seventy local scouts began searching for the children deep in the forest.
The Colombian army also participated in the search and rescue efforts.
The search efforts bore fruit weeks later. The four children were found exhausted in a treeless area.
cassava FLOUR SAVED LIVES
Eating cassava flour helped save the lives of four children who were found in the Amazon jungle a month after their plane crashed, according to Pedro Arnulfo Sánchez Suárez, a Colombian military special forces spokesman.
Spokesperson Suárez said the children ate “three kilos of semolina,” a cassava flour commonly used by indigenous tribes in the Amazon region.
“They ate semolina after the accident… But they finally ran out of food and decided to look for a place to survive,” Suárez said of the missing children. Also, Suárez added, “They were malnourished, but they were fully conscious and sane when we found them.”
THEY RUN TO THEIR SAVERS WITH THE BABY IN HAND
In a televised interview on Sunday, members of the rescue group, who are themselves members of the indigenous population, described the first moments after meeting the children.
They described how the eldest child, seeing them coming, ran towards them with a baby in her arms, and the first words the children said to them.
Rescuers say the children call themselves ‘I’m hungry’ and ‘My mother is dead’.
40 DAYS WITHOUT WATER AND HUNGER…
“The thing to do now is to stabilize[their health],” Colombian Defense Minister Ivan Velasquez told reporters about the children found 40 days later.
In addition, Velasquez stated that children are hungry and thirsty.
THE PRESIDENT OF COLOMBIA VISITED
Colombian President Gustavo Petro, who visited the children at the hospital on Saturday, congratulated their return and said their survival will be “commemorated in history”.
“They are children of the jungle and now children of Colombia,” said Petro.