The Avianline Charters’s company, owner of the accident aircraft, agrees with the ICBF version and ensures that the minors could be halfway due to electrical storms in the area that make the river difficult to navigate.
“At this moment there is no other priority other than moving forward with the search until they are found. The lives of the children are the most important thing,” Petro insisted.
During the rescue operations, the soldiers had found a “shelter made improvised with sticks and branches”, so they suspected that there is at least one survivor.
Some scissors, hair ties, shoes, clothes and a bottle located in the middle of branches of the jungle served as an indication for the uniformed officers.
They also found “bitten fruits of the jungle,” according to what Germán Camargo, director of Civil Defense in the department of Meta, told AFP, from where the search efforts were coordinated.
Gigantic trees up to 40 meters, wild animals and heavy rain made the search difficult.
The Air Force joined the so-called “Operation Hope” with three helicopters that flew over the dense jungle for days.
One of them carried a speaker “capable of covering an area of about 1,500 meters” with a message recorded by the children’s grandmother. In the Huitoto language, the woman told her grandchildren that they were looking for them and asked them not to continue advancing through the jungle.
The authorities have not reported the reasons for the flight of the aboriginal family. According to the local press, the seventh passenger was a leader of that community.
In this region of difficult access by river and without highways, the inhabitants usually travel in private flights.
According to the Indigenous Organization of Colombia (ONIC), the Huitotos live in “harmony” with the hostile conditions of the Amazon and preserve traditions such as hunting, fishing and gathering wild fruits.
The pilot reported problems with the aircraft’s engine minutes before the accident, according to the official disaster response body.