A footprint, chewed fruit, a makeshift shelter... With the discovery of new clues, the Colombian army ensures to be "very close" to find the four children survivors of a plane crash and missing now for nearly thirty days in the jungle of southern Colombia.
These latest clues found "confirm two things," General Pedro Sanchez, in charge of the search, told a local radio station. "The first is that they (the children) are alive, and the second is that we are very close," said General Sanchez, at the head of nearly 160 soldiers assisted by 70 indigenous people who comb this area of forest between the departments of Caqueta and Guaviare.
The four children, aged 13, 9, 4 and 11 months, have been wandering alone in the Colombian jungle for nearly a month after the May 1 crash of the Cessna 206 on which they were travelling with their mother and two other relatives. All three adults died in the crash, and their bodies were found by the military at the crash site. Originally from the Uitoto indigenous group, the children are used to life in the jungle and know how to survive, say their relatives.
A reduced search area
The rescue teams, using sniffer dogs, were initially looking for siblings in an area of more than 320 km, three times the size of Paris intramural. But the new findings narrowed the search area "to about twenty square kilometers," the general explained.
The most recent fingerprint found could, because of its size, match Lesly, the eldest of the group, who, according to her relatives, moves through the jungle with ease. Unlike the sandal prints found in previous days, the new trace indicates that the girl now walks barefoot.
About 1.2 km south of this footprint, "we found some kind of shelter. It was probably used by children for one or two nights" to rest, according to the senior officer.
Hope revived
Already on Monday, General Sanchez had revived hope, announcing that his men had discovered a pair of shoes and two diapers, including a used one.
He even estimated that his units were "about a hundred meters" from the children "corroborating the clues found with the GPS", but that rains, vegetation and marshy terrain made the search difficult. "There, twenty meters away, you can't see anything," he explained, adding that "the rain, about sixteen hours a day, erases all traces and muffles the noise of movement."
The Air Force joined the rescue operation dubbed "Hope", with three helicopters. Using a loudspeaker on board an aircraft, a message recorded by the children's grandmother was even broadcast. In the indigenous Uitoto, she tells her grandchildren that they are wanted and asks them to stay where they are so they can be rescued.