Search and rescue teams are racing against time to try to find four children who’ve been missing for 20 days after the plane they were travelling in crashed in a jungle in Colombia
“We are looking for you. Do not move anymore, stay near a pipe or ravine. Make noise. Make smoke. We’re going to save you. We are close. Your grandmother Fatima and family are looking for you,” reads a bright pink flyer in Spanish and in the indigenous language of the children, that rescue teams have scattered across the search area, along with survival kits.
“We are going to call off (the search) when we find them,” the military’s special operations commander, General Pedro Sanchez, told the media in San Jose del Guaviare, where the search and rescue operations are being conducted.
However, the military forces admit that they have not found new clues since the last footprint in the basin of a river that they revealed on Saturday.
Lesly Mukutuy, 11, Soleiny Mukutuy, 9, Tien Noriel Ronoque Mukutuy, 4, and 11-month-old Cristin Neruman Ranoque were on the plane that crashed on May 1 along with their mother and two other adults whose bodies have already been recovered from the aircraft.
More than 100 people have been deployed to look for them in the vast jungle in the south of the country where the Cessna 206 plane crashed.
The military forces on the ground are accompanied by indigenous people who know the area.
They’re hoping the forest provides food, drink and shelter and that the children, belonging to a Amazonian indigenous community, have the tools to survive until they are found.
On Saturday, 100 survival kits were dropped from the air, including water, oral serum, lighters, lollies and biscuits.
The children were accompanying their mother on their first trip outside their remote community to visit their father.
The search area is a virgin forest, where it can rain for up to 16 hours a day and where there are many poisonous snakes, boas, big cats and insects.
“It is inhospitable,” explained the special forces commander, who added that the area was also dangerous as it served as a hideout for armed groups such as the main FARC dissident group.
However, the military dismisses the possibility that the dissidents have children in their possession.
“It would be absurd for some criminal group to try to interfere in this search involving not only the best of the military forces, but also the indigenous community,” General Parez said.
Australian Associated Press