2023-06-13 01:13:24
Indigenous children rescued in the Amazon jungle after spending 40 days missing after a plane crash they waited for help for four days near the plane, but when they saw that he did not arrive, they began to walk to try to get out of there, one of his grandparents revealed this Monday.
“They stayed around the plane for four days waiting to see if someone could come pick them up,” said Narciso Mucutuy, the children’s grandfather, who added that since no one found them they began to walk along “trochas hacia el monte”.
In statements released by the Ministry of Defense, Mucutuy assured that this was told to him by Lesly, the eldest of the four children, who also told him that after leaving the plane they were walking aimlessly and every night they left clues in the places where they slept, in case someone was looking for them.
The 13-year-old girl Lesly has been praised as the heroine of this story of human overcoming because it was she who, with her knowledge of the jungle, took care of for 40 days his brothers Soleiny Mucutuy, 9; She has Noriel Ranoque Mucutuy, five years old, and Cristin Neruman Ranoque, a one-year-old baby.
The minor also told her grandfather that they survived the first days in the jungle eating “farina”a flour prepared with cassava that is a traditional food of the indigenous people of the Amazon.
survival lesson
After the accident, and seeing that the rescue had not arrived, Lesly took the fariña out of the suitcase, one of the three adults who were traveling with them on the Cessna 206 plane and who perished in the incident that occurred on May 1 in the jungle between the departments of Caquetá and Guaviare, recounted the grandfather at the Central Military Hospital (HMC) in Bogotá, where the children are recovering.
The three adults who died In the accident were the mother of the children, the pilot and an indigenous leader from the area.
According to Manuel Ranoque, father of the two minor children, said yesterday, Lesly told him that her mother “She was alive for four days” and before dying he told them to “go away” in search of help.
The four minors were found on Friday in a remote part of the jungle where some 200 soldiers searched for them tirelessly for weeks, including commandos of the Army’s Special Forces, and indigenous people from the area, all integrated into the “Operation Hope”.
After the rescue, they were transferred by helicopter of the Colombian Air Force (FAC) to San José del Guaviare, capital of Guaviare, where a C-295 plane configured as an ambulance picked them up and took them to Bogotá.
The grandfather related that Lesly made the one-year-old baby give up the bottle, because “I gave it a little bit until it was over”after which he began to give him only water.
“By the time they were found, (Lesly) says she couldn’t walk anymore. She was already very tired, very tired. So they huddled in one place and sat down. She had the little girl between her legs when they found them,” Mucutuy said.
While details continue to be learned about how the children survived 40 days in the jungle, the Colombian Institute for Family Welfare (ICBF) will maintain their custody until resolve family problems between the maternal grandparents and Manuel Ranoque, father of two of them, who asked on Sunday to be allowed to live with the four minors in Bogotá.
Special commands, keys
A successful duo. Indigenous volunteers and seasoned special commandos from the Colombian Army played a key role in the astonishing rescue of four children lost in the Amazon jungle for 40 days.
“It was a spectacular amalgamation of indigenous knowledge and military art“, praised Brigadier General Pedro Sánchez, who led the search operations, on Sunday.
With sun-tanned skin, a frank look and direct speech, General Sánchez is also the head of the Joint Command of Special Operations (CCOES) of the Colombian Armed Forces.
It was his men from the special forces who participated in the exhausting daily searches in the hostile jungle of Caquetá, where on May 1 the plane crashed in which three adults, including their mother, died in the accident.
For them “it was a different mission” to the usual combats against the numerous armed groups that operate in the country.
Rescue children? “We always save and protect liveseven during our combat missions”, stressed General Sánchez as if to defend an institution often accused of summary executions during the long internal conflict that has bled the country dry, its collusion with extreme right-wing paramilitaries or the complicity of officers with drug traffickers.
Here, “failing or giving up was not an option,” he said. And it was his men, “the most trained soldiers in the Colombian army” but that “nobody in the media knows about,” who achieved “the impossible.”
Created in 2007, the CCOES brings together elite elements Army, Air Force and Navy.
In his videos for the public, he claims to be “Colombia’s honor guard” and his motto is “Union, Integrity, Victory”.
According to articles in the specialized press, it has some 3,000 men, with three components -land, urban and maritime- and a fourth air support component.
Its main mission is “the planning and execution of special operations inside and outside the national territoryl against terrorist groups, high-value targets and organized crime,” a Colombian military source told AFP.
In October 2021 the CCOES participated in the capture of “Otoniel”the leader of the Clan del Golfo, the largest cartel in the country.
Trained in nursing, as well as in search and rescue, “they were entrusted with this mission in the Amazon not only because of the difficult geographical conditions of the terrain and the difficulty of access, but also because dissidents operate in this region of the FARC guerrillas,” added the source.
There are other special forces units within the Colombian Armed Forces, such as the Marine Commandos, the Special Operations and Anti-Terrorism Command (COPES) and the fearsome Police Jungle Commandos. In Colombia, the Police depends on the Ministry of Defense.
Source: EFE and AFP
PB
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