Dying mother told 4 children to leave her at Colombian plane crash site to survive; 40 days later they were r
BOGOTA, Colombia - The mother of four children who survived 40 days in the Amazon wilderness after their plane crashed told the children to leave her and seek help.
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How did the children survive for 40 days in the Amazon jungle?
The siblings, ages 13, 9, 4 and 1, were rescued Friday after an exhaustive search involving helicopters, more than 150 soldiers and dogs and countless volunteers in the dense jungle in Colombia.
They are expected to remain for at least two weeks in a military hospital in Bogota receiving treatment.
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Where are the children now?
Manuel Ranoque, father of the two youngest siblings, told reporters outside the hospital Sunday that Lesly Jacobombaire Mucutuy, 13, said their mother survived for four days after the May 1 plane crash.
"Before she died, their mom told them something like, 'You guys get out of here,'" Ranoque said, The Associated Press reported. The father added that it was difficult to get details from the children, who have not been eating well and are tired from their ordeal.
Rescuers found the siblings Friday, June 9, after combing the remote area of Amazon jungle wilderness in Colombia for five weeks, tracking scattered signs of their survival that included a makeshift shelter and half-eaten fruit.
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How did rescuers locate the children?
Helicopters, unable to land where the children were discovered, used rescue lines to lift them some 200 feet from the jungle floor.
The children, their mother and two others were traveling May 1 from the Amazonian village of Araracuara to the town of San Jose del Guaviare when the plane went down, The Washington Post reported. The pilot radioed that the Cessna single-engine propeller plane was experiencing an engine failure.
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Who are the children and what led to the plane crash?
Two weeks later, searchers found the wreckage and the bodies of three adults, including the children's mother, but the siblings -- who are members of the Huitoto Indigenous group -- had left the crash site.
Gen. Pedro Sanchez, commander of the Joint Command of Special Operations in Colombia, had likened the search in the dense jungle to "finding a tiny flea in a huge rug that moves in unpredictable directions," he said.
The children were found a little more than 2 miles from the crash site of the initial incident, the Colombian Air Force said.
The siblings survived eating cassava flour that was aboard the plane and seeds. Some familiarity with the rainforest's fruits is also credited with aiding their survival.
The Organization of the Indigenous Peoples of the Colombian Amazon said in a statement that their survival is a sign of a "knowledge and relationship with the natural environment of life," which is "learned from the mother's womb and practiced from a very early age."