A baby and three other children have survived after their plane crashed in the Amazon jungle in Colombia.
According to Metro UK, the three children and a baby were reportedly found alive more than two weeks after the plane crashed.
The plane – a Cessna 206 – was carrying seven people between Araracuara, in Amazonas province, and San Jose del Guaviare, a city in Guaviare province, when it issued a mayday alert due to engine failure in the early hours of 1 May.
Three adults, including the pilot, died as a result of the crash and their bodies were found inside the plane.
One of the dead passengers, Ranoque Mucutuy, was the mother of the four children, who are of the indigenous Huitoto ethnicity.
However, the four children, aged 13, nine and 4 as well as an 11-month-old baby, managed to survive the impact.
Colombian authorities have since deployed more than 100 soldiers with sniffer dogs to search for the children, who have been missing for 17 days.
On Wednesday, Colombia’s President Gustav Petro tweeted that the children had been found after ‘arduous search efforts’ by the military. ‘A joy for the country,’ he said.
But he was later contradicted by military sources, who said the children had not yet been found.
Earlier on Wednesday, the Colombian military said search efforts had been stepped up after a ‘shelter built in an improvised way with sticks and branches’ had been found.
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