24 days after the crash of their plane in Colombia, the four children wanted by the Colombian authorities have still not been located but they could still be alive. Encouraging clues were thus found this week, reports BBC News this Thursday. The aircraft crashed in the Amazon jungle on May 1 and was only found 15 days later by rescue teams. The mother of four children and two other adults were found dead in the cabin.
new hopes
Traces already suggested that the children had survived the accident. By combing through a large area, the soldiers had found a bottle, a pair of scissors and a hair elastic. They had also discovered a makeshift shelter made of branches as well as a cut passion fruit. This week, new objects were spotted by an aboriginal woman 500 m from the place where the Cessna 206 had crashed.
She got hold of a diaper, towel and shoes that may well belong to one of the children, aged 4. Search teams also found another diaper, a phone case and the bottle cap discovered the previous week near the crash site. According to the military forces, the children could be in an area of ​​323 km2. Worried about the disappearance of several of their own, the indigenous Uitoto community joined in the search. She hopes the children’s knowledge of fruit and the jungle in general will help them survive.
The Colombian presidency has announced that it has dropped 10,000 leaflets in the jungle, explaining in Spanish and the indigenous language how to join the rescue. The army is also said to have dropped around 100 relief kits and is using satellites to try to locate survivors. The recent discovery of objects, however, does not mean that the children are still alive. An army colonel estimated that they had been abandoned between May 3 and May 8.