Bag of flour helped Amazon miracle kids survive weeks in jungle

A bag of cassava flour helped four children survive in the Amazon for nearly seven weeks after a plane crash that killed the adults they were with.

The Indigenous Huitoto children, ages 13, 9, 4 and 11 months, were continuing to be treated Sunday at a Bogota, Colombia, hospital, where they had been visited this weekend by grateful family members, military officials and even President Gustavo Petro, who predicted their epic tale of survival “will remain in history.”

“When the plane crashed, they took out [of the wreckage] a [bag of flour], and with that, they survived,” the children’s uncle, Fidencio Valencia, told reporters who were gathered outside the hospital Saturday.

The flour was from cassavas, a type of yucca that is commonly eaten in the region.

“After the [flour] ran out, they began to eat seeds” from plants they were familiar with, Valencia said.

The eldest child, Lesly Mucutuy, also used survival knowledge imparted by her grandmother to build a camp in the wilderness using hair ribbons and find other safe foods for her siblings, relatives said.

“When we played, we set up like little camps,” the children’s aunt, Damaris Mucutuy, told the Colombian news outlet Caracol TV of the survival games Lesly and her 9-year-old sibling would play with family elders.

Lesly “knew what fruits she can’t eat because there are many poisonous fruits in the forest. And she knew how to take care of a baby,” the aunt said. 

Despite being dehydrated and ravaged with bug bites, “the children are fine” and being visited by social workers and tribal musicians, Mucutuy said.

The kids were found Friday 3 miles away from the crash site — 40 days after the Cessna single-engine propeller plane crashed because of mechanical error, killing the children’s mother and the two other adults on board.

About 150 soldiers with dogs teamed up with volunteers from Indigenous tribes — who historically have an adversarial relationship with the military — to search for survivors.

“The minors were already very weak,” said Gen. Pedro Sanchez, who was in charge of the rescue effort.

“And surely their strength was only enough to breathe or reach a small fruit to feed themselves or drink a drop of water in the jungle.”

Rescuers had held out hope that the kids were alive after discovering pieces of fruit with human teeth marks, along with a baby bottle, diapers and a pair of footprints in the area.

The children were falsely reported found May 18 and survived for three additional weeks until their rescue.

Petro announced the rescue shortly after signing a cease-fire with the National Liberation Army rebel group during talks in Cuba. The guerrilla group, which controls drug-trafficking routes, has been in violent conflict with the government since the 1960s.

The leftist president linked the rescue of the children and the historic accord in a statement.

“The meeting of knowledge: indigenous and military,” he tweeted. “Here is a different path for Colombia: I believe that this is the true path of Peace.”

“The jungle saved them,” Petro said. “They are children of the jungle, and now they are also children of Colombia.”

With AP wires