4 brothers found alive after 40 days in jungle
BOGOTA, Colombia — Colombian President Gustavo Petro said Friday that authorities found alive four children who survived a small plane crash 40 days ago and had been the subject of an intense search in the Amazon jungle that held Colombians on edge.
The children were alone when searchers found them and are now receiving medical attention, Petro said.
The president said the youngsters are an “example of survival” and predicted their saga “will remain in history.”
The crash happened in the early hours of May 1, when the Cessna single-engine propeller plane with six passengers and a pilot declared an emergency due to an engine failure.
The small aircraft fell off radar a short time later and a frantic search for survivors began. Two weeks after the crash, on May 16, a search team found the plane in a thick patch of the rainforest and recovered the bodies of the three adults on board, but the small children were nowhere to be found.
Sensing that they could be alive, Colombia’s army stepped up the hunt and flew 150 soldiers with dogs into the area to track the group of four siblings, ages 13, 9, 4 and 11 months. Dozens of volunteers from Indigenous tribes also helped search.
As the search progressed, soldiers found small clues in the jungle that led them to believe the children were still living, including a pair of footprints, a baby bottle, diapers and pieces of fruit that looked like it had been bitten by humans.
“The jungle saved them” Petro said. “They are children of the jungle, and now they are also children of Colombia.”
Fail of the tape: Russia says it blew up advanced tank; video shows it was a tractor
WASHINGTON — A grainy black-and-white gunsight video Russia released this week to bolster a claim its military blew up some of Ukraine’s most fearsome tanks actually documented the destruction of a tractor, according to a visual analysis by The Associated Press.
The video, which claimed to show the destruction of eight German Leopard tanks, shows what appears to be large pieces of stationary farm machinery parked in a field, specifically a self-propelled sprayer, a type of specialized tractor common on modern farms, and two combines used to harvest corn and wheat.