Colombian President Gustavo Petro on Thursday retracted a statement saying that four indigenous children missing for more than two weeks after an airplane crash in the Amazon had been found alive.
He had deleted his Wednesday night tweet in which he had announced the rescue of the four children, including an 11-month-old baby, Petro wrote on Twitter.
“I am sorry for what happened. The military forces and indigenous communities will continue in their tireless search to give the country the news it is waiting for,” he said.
Photo: AFP
More than 100 soldiers have been deployed with sniffer dogs to search for the minors who were traveling in an airplane that crashed on May 1, leaving three adults including the pilot and the children’s mother dead.
Rescuers believe the children — who in addition to the 11-month-old include a 13, nine and four-year-old — have been wandering through the jungle in the southern Caqueta Department since the crash.
“At this time, there is no other priority other than progressing with the search until finding them,” Petro said. “The children’s lives are the most important thing.”
Petro’s announcement on Wednesday had been met with uncertainty, as he gave no details about where or how the children had been rescued, nor how they had survived alone in the jungle.
“Joy for the country,” he had written.
Amid widespread confusion, the military has not commented since Petro’s announcement on Wednesday.
The children’s grandmother, Fidencio Valencia, said that there was hope that they would be found alive, as “they are used to being in the jungle.”
She said they might be hiding out of fear, but she said that “indigenous energy” would help the rescuers locate them.
The Colombian Institute of Family Welfare said that it had on Wednesday received “information from the territory confirming contact with the four children.”
It said that the report indicated that “they had been found alive and are also in good health.”
However, the agency said that the military had not been able to “establish official contact” due to bad weather and difficult terrain, and were continuing search and rescue operations.
Avianline Charters, owner of the crashed aircraft, had previously said that one of its pilots in the search area was told that the children had been found and that they were being taken by boat downriver.
In photographs released by the military, scissors, shoes and hair ties could be seen among branches on the jungle floor.
A baby’s drinking bottle and half-eaten pieces of fruit had been spotted before the shelter’s discovery.
DOUBLE-MURDER CASE: The officer told the dispatcher he would check the locations of the callers, but instead headed to a pizzeria, remaining there for about an hour A New Jersey officer has been charged with misconduct after prosecutors said he did not quickly respond to and properly investigate reports of a shooting that turned out to be a double murder, instead allegedly stopping at an ATM and pizzeria. Franklin Township Police Sergeant Kevin Bollaro was the on-duty officer on the evening of Aug. 1, when police received 911 calls reporting gunshots and screaming in Pittstown, about 96km from Manhattan in central New Jersey, Hunterdon County Prosecutor Renee Robeson’s office said. However, rather than responding immediately, prosecutors said GPS data and surveillance video showed Bollaro drove about 3km
Tens of thousands of people on Saturday took to the streets of Spain’s eastern city of Valencia to mark the first anniversary of floods that killed 229 people and to denounce the handling of the disaster. Demonstrators, many carrying photos of the victims, called on regional government head Carlos Mazon to resign over what they said was the slow response to one of Europe’s deadliest natural disasters in decades. “People are still really angry,” said Rosa Cerros, a 42-year-old government worker who took part with her husband and two young daughters. “Why weren’t people evacuated? Its incomprehensible,” she said. Mazon’s
‘MOTHER’ OF THAILAND: In her glamorous heyday in the 1960s, former Thai queen Sirikit mingled with US presidents and superstars such as Elvis Presley The year-long funeral ceremony of former Thai queen Sirikit started yesterday, with grieving royalists set to salute the procession bringing her body to lie in state at Bangkok’s Grand Palace. Members of the royal family are venerated in Thailand, treated by many as semi-divine figures, and lavished with glowing media coverage and gold-adorned portraits hanging in public spaces and private homes nationwide. Sirikit, the mother of Thai King Vajiralongkorn and widow of the nation’s longest-reigning monarch, died late on Friday at the age of 93. Black-and-white tributes to the royal matriarch are being beamed onto towering digital advertizing billboards, on
POWER ABUSE WORRY: Some people warned that the broad language of the treaty could lead to overreach by authorities and enable the repression of government critics Countries signed their first UN treaty targeting cybercrime in Hanoi yesterday, despite opposition from an unlikely band of tech companies and rights groups warning of expanded state surveillance. The new global legal framework aims to bolster international cooperation to fight digital crimes, from child pornography to transnational cyberscams and money laundering. More than 60 countries signed the declaration, which means it would go into force once ratified by those states. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the signing as an “important milestone,” and that it was “only the beginning.” “Every day, sophisticated scams destroy families, steal migrants and drain billions of dollars from our economy...
RSS