Petro retracts after finding four children lost in the jungle

First modification: 05/19/2023 – 00:54

The Colombian president starred in a new moment of tension before the country. It was derived from a comment posted on his Twitter account on Wednesday, in which he stated that four minors, aged 13, 9 and 4 years and 11 months, lost in a plane crash on May 1, had finally been Found after long days of searching.

The Colombian Institute for Family Welfare, ICBF, had informed the president that the four minors had been found alive and that they were “in good health.” According to the institution, the information on the status of the children came from indigenous communities.

The news, expected by the entire country for almost two weeks, had to be deleted by the president himself this Thursday, after the military forces, which are in charge of the search operations, could not corroborate the information provided by the ICBF to the Presidency.

The minors have been missing since the Avianline Charter’s plane in which they were traveling with their mother reported an engine failure and crashed in the middle of the jungle while flying over the department of Caquetá, a territory in the center-south of the country. From that same day, an emergency was declared and a rescue plan was launched with three helicopters and more than 100 members.

The Military Forces indicate that they have found traces of minors

The ship was traveling from Araracuara to the municipality of San Vicente del Caguan, both located within Caquetá. The mother of the minors and two other adults died in the accident: the pilot and a local indigenous leader. Their bodies were found inside it by rescue teams. However, the four minors were not there.

The Military Forces have reported that they have found indications that the minors are still alive after the accident. Among the leafy jungle area that they are searching, they found a baby’s bottle, a pair of scissors, remains of fruit that they would have eaten to survive, and a makeshift shelter made from tree leaves.

Petro: “There will be no different priority than advancing the search” for the children

This Thursday, the local authorities reported that the bodies of the mother of the minors, Magdalena Mucutuy Valencia; of the pilot, Hernado Murcia Morales, and of the deceased indigenous leader, Herman Mendoza Hernández, were recovered and will be transferred to the municipality of San José del Guaviare, where they will be “delivered to Legal Medicine to carry out the corresponding judicial procedures,” he indicated in a Civil Aeronautical statement.

Petro assured that the rescue work will continue. The matter has taken on the character of the State, since the president, after his apology, assured that “there is no other priority than that of advancing with the search until they are found.” “The lives of the children are the most important thing,” he said.

The president also ordered the director of the ICBF, Astrid Cáceres, to travel to the department of Caquetá to supervise the search for the minors on the ground.

Meanwhile, the family rejected the misinformation regarding the situation of the minors. “Physical and emotional health is not a game that can be erased and/or easily forgotten,” said a statement, which also urged the media to cease their “persecution” to provide information regarding the situation of the family and They assured that these dynamics ignore their rights and violate and intensify “the pain”. They also asked the authorities to deploy all the necessary means to determine the causes of the accident.

With EFE and local media