Bogota - Four Indigenous children who were missing for more than five weeks in Colombia’s southern jungle will tell their own story about the ordeal, the father of the two youngest siblings said on Sunday.
The children, aged one to 13, survived a May 1 plane crash that killed their mother and two other adults. The children were found on Friday in Caqueta province after weeks of searching by the military and Indigenous communities.
Their ordeal began in the early hours, when the Cessna 206 aircraft carrying seven people and travelling between Araracuara airport in Caqueta and San Jose del Guaviare, a city in Guaviare province, issued a mayday alert due to engine failure.
“They will tell their stories and you will hear them,” said Manuel Ranoque, the father of the one-year-old and five-year-old siblings, after visiting them at Bogota's military hospital.
“It’s not easy to ask them because the children went 40 days without eating well, so I have not been able to get information from the oldest child,” Ranoque told reporters.
He said the children’s mother had survived for four days after the crash, an account disputed by another family member who also spoke to journalists.
Reuters was not able to independently verify the information.
According to Sputnik, the children have been taken to a military hospital in Bogota and are in good health now, doctor of the hospital Carlos Arango said.
“After an initial check of girl Lesly and her three younger brothers, we found that they are… in acceptable clinical condition, despite the situation experienced in the past 40 days," Arango was quoted as saying by Colombian news agency EFE on Saturday.