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Colombian children found alive - 21st June 2023

After 40 days, four missing children are safe. The children were lost in the Colombian jungle.

Six weeks before, they went on a plane journey. But their plane crashed in the Amazon jungle. Their mother, the pilot and another adult died. The four children, 13, 9, 5 and a baby, started walking. They wanted to find help. Lesly, the 13 year old, looked after the others.

The children were from the Amazon's Huitoto people. Lesly's grandmother taught her about the jungle. Those lessons helped the children. They walked by the river. Lesly knew which plants to eat.

Finally, help arrived. Henry Guerrero, a Huitoto man, helped find them.

Henry Guerrero: "The one who directed everything in the 40 days was the eldest. She was very intelligent, because when we checked the briefcase, we checked what she was carrying. She took the tent, towel, camping equipment, she took a torch with a couple of batteries, but it was already dead, the two mobile phones, with what they were sometimes distracted at night, a music box and the bottles of soda."

The Huitoto people worked with the Colombian army. Together they found the children. Dogs helped too. One dog stayed with them for four days at the end.

Guerrero said the children were thin, but well.

Henry Guerrero: "When we found them, it was really a great happiness. They were a little bit malnourished. But what we admired about the four minors, apart from the baby who does not speak, was that she had not lost consciousness. They remembered everything."

Now, the children are in hospital in Bogota. The doctors are checking them. But soon they'll join their father.