Colombian soldiers take care of the four children shortly after they are found
A mother-of-four rescued after 40 days in the Amazon jungle survived four days after their plane crashed.
Magdalena Mukutui asked her children to leave her behind and sought help as she lay dying.
Speaking to reporters, the children’s father, Manuel Ranoc, said his eldest daughter told him their mother had forced them to “get out” and save them.
The siblings, aged 13, nine, five and one, were rescued on Friday and airlifted out of the forest.
They were transferred to the military hospital in Bogota, the country’s capital.
“It’s the same thing [13-year-old Lesly] In fact, it was clear to me that her mother was alive for four days,” Mr Ranok told reporters outside the hospital.
“Before he died, their mother said to them, ‘You get out of here. He’s going to show you the same kind of love that your father is going to see. You,'” she said.
Details of the children’s time in the jungle and their miraculous rescue are revealed – including the first things the children said when they were found.
Rescue worker Nicolas Ordonez Gomes remembers the moment they found the children.
“The older daughter, Leslie, with the little baby, ran to me. Leslie: “I’m hungry,” she told public broadcasting channel RTVC.
“One of the two boys was lying down. He got up and said to me: ‘My mother is dead’.” He said the rescuers responded with positive words, “saying we are friends and we were sent by family.”
“I want some bread and sausage,” Mr Ordonez Gomez said the boy replied.
In footage of the children’s rescue released on Sunday, the four siblings looked emaciated from weeks of fending for themselves in the wilderness.
Ms Mucutuy and her children were on a Cessna 206 flight on May 1 en route to San Jose del Guayar for Araguara in Amazonas province.
Manuel Ranoc, the father of the children, was rescued after 40 days in the Amazon jungle.
The bodies of the mother and the two pilots were recovered by the military at the crash site, but the children appear to have wandered into the rainforest to seek help.
The missing children became the focus of a massive rescue operation involving dozens of soldiers and local residents.
Rescuers tracked down the children after spotting signs in the woods, including footprints and bitten fruit.
Members of the children’s community believed that their knowledge of fruits and forest survival skills would give them a better chance of survival.
Astrid Cáceres, president of the Colombian Family Welfare Association, said the timing of their experiment was “forest harvesting” and that they could eat the fruits in bloom.
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