The miracle that Colombia had been waiting for 40 days finally occurred this Friday with the rescue of the four children lost in the jungle since last May 1, after the plane in which they were traveling with their mother, the pilot and another adult crashed.

The minors, four siblings ages one to 13, were found in a remote point between the departments of Caquetá and Guaviare, where some 200 soldiers had been tirelessly searching for them for weeks along with indigenous people from various tribes who knew the jungle. The children were treated by doctors and later transferred by helicopter to the military base of San José del Guaviare, where “they were stabilized.”

“A joy for the whole country! The four children were found alive. that they were lost 40 days ago in the Colombian jungle,” Colombian President Gustavo Petro announced on his Twitter account. Minutes later, and as soon as he got off the presidential plane from Havana, the president described the discovery as “a gift to life”.

“Now that I am back, the first news is that indeed the indigenous communities that were in the search and the Military Forces jointly found the four children alive after 40 days,” he stressed. The Army, for its part, has released photographs in which the four minors are seen sitting in a clearing in the middle of the jungle, covered with blankets and surrounded by soldiers and indigenous people.

Although they look emaciated and malnourished in the photos, the four are in good health considering that they had to overcome the dangers of the jungle and lack of food for so many weeks. According to Velásquez, the children received some of the hundreds of food packages that were dropped from the helicopters over several days and “managed to feed on them.”

The four children – aged 13, nine, four and one – were traveling with the three adults on a Cessna 206 plane operated by the Avianline Charter’s company that crashed on May 1. The adults died and their bodies were found several days later. “They were alone. They themselves achieved an example of survival that will go down in history, so today those children are the children of peace,” said President Petro.

After the discovery of the plane began a gigantic search operation of the four children during which soldiers and indigenous people walked thousands of square kilometers of jungle and made numerous helicopter and airplane flights until they finally found them. The case has kept the entire Latin American country pending the details of the search, for which its rescue has been celebrated with joy.