(Bogotá) A footprint, chewed fruit, a makeshift shelter… with the discovery of new clues, the Colombian army claims to be “very close” to finding the four children who survived a plane crash and are now missing for almost thirty days in the jungle of southern Colombia.
These latest clues found “confirm two things”, General Pedro Sanchez, who is in charge of the research, explained to a local radio station. “The first is that they (the children) are alive, and the second is that we are very close”, assured General Sanchez, at the head of nearly 160 soldiers helped by 70 natives who rake this forest area between the departments of Caqueta and Guaviare.
These four children, aged 13, 9, 4 and 11 months (the eldest and the smallest are girls), have been wandering alone in the Colombian jungle for almost a month after the accident on 1er May, of the Cessna 206 aboard which they were traveling with their mother and two other relatives. All three adults died in the crash, and their bodies were found by the military at the crash site.
Originally from the Uitoto indigenous group, the children are used to life in the jungle and know how to survive it, assure their relatives.
Rescue teams, using sniffer dogs, were initially looking for the siblings in an area of more than 320 km, three times the size of intramural Paris. But the new discoveries have reduced the search area “to about twenty square kilometers”, the general explained.
The most recent footprint found could, due to its size, correspond to Lesly, the eldest of the group, who, according to those close to her, moves through the jungle with ease. Unlike the sandal prints found the previous days, the new trace indicates that the girl now walks barefoot.
About 1.2 kilometers south of this footprint, “we found some sort of shelter. It was probably used by the children for one or two nights “to rest, according to the senior officer.
Rekindled hope
Already on Monday, General Sanchez had revived hope, announcing that his men had discovered a pair of shoes and two diapers, one of which was used.
He had even estimated that his units were “about a hundred meters” from the children “by corroborating the clues found with the GPS”, but that the rains, vegetation and marshy terrain made the search difficult. “There, twenty meters away, you can’t see anything,” he explained, adding that “the rain, about sixteen hours a day, erases all traces and stifles the sound of movement”.
The Air Force joined the relief operation dubbed “Hope”, with three helicopters. Using a loudspeaker on board a device, a message recorded by the children’s grandmother was even broadcast.
In the indigenous Uitoto language, she tells her grandchildren that they are wanted and asks them to stay where they are so they can be rescued.
Satellite technology is also being deployed to try to determine the path the children might have taken through the jungle and powerful searchlights have been pointed skyward in an attempt to direct them.
The grandfather of the disappeared, Fidencio Valencia, says he has confidence in the eldest of the siblings, Lesly, “strong” and “intelligent”, who according to him succeeded in bringing his brothers and sisters, who are “used to the jungle “.
According to the National Indigenous Organization of Colombia (ONIC), the Uitoto live in “harmony” in the jungle and maintain traditions such as hunting, fishing and the gathering of wild fruits.