No details were immediately released on how the youngsters managed to survive on their own for so many days, reports say.

 

The crash happened in the early hours of May 1, when the Cessna single-engine propeller plane with six passengers and a pilot declared an emergency due to an engine failure.

 

The small aircraft fell off the radar a short time later and a frantic search for survivors began. Two weeks after the crash, on May 16, a search team found the plane in a thick patch of the rainforest and recovered the bodies of the three adults on board, but the small children were nowhere to be found.

 

Sensing that they could be alive, Colombia’s army stepped up the hunt for the children and flew 150 soldiers with dogs into the area to track the group of four siblings, ages 13, 9, 4, and 11 months. Dozens of volunteers from Indigenous tribes also helped search.

 

On Friday, the military tweeted pictures showing a group of soldiers and volunteers posing with the children, who were wrapped in thermal blankets. One of the soldiers held a bottle to the smallest child’s lips.

 

During the search, in an area where visibility is greatly limited by mist and thick foliage, soldiers on helicopters dropped boxes of food into the jungle, hoping that it would help sustain the children. Planes flying over the jungle fired flares to help search crews on the ground at night, and rescuers used megaphones that blasted a message recorded by the siblings’ grandmother, telling them to stay in one place.

 

Rumors also emerged about the children’s whereabouts and on May 18, President Petro tweeted that the children had been found. He then deleted the message, claiming he had been misinformed by a government agency.

 

The group of four children had been traveling with their mother from the Amazonian village of Araracuara to San Jose del Guaviare, a small city on the edge of the Amazon rainforest.