Gripping footage shows a squad of Colombian Army soldiers finding four children who survived in the unforgiving Amazon rainforest for 40 days and terrifying nights.
The four siblings lost their mum when the Cessna aircraft they were flying in crashed into the jungle canopy on May 1.
An indigenous leader and the pilot were also killed in the smash, but somehow the four children - Lesly, aged 13, Soleiny, nine, Tien Noriel, four, and little Cristin, who turned one while lost, all survived.
A team of 150 Colombian soldiers was sent to scour the forest from the skies above and to comb the jungle floor, which is so dense with vegetation that it's near impossible to move through.
They initially found the bodies of the three adults near the battered plane, but the children were nowhere to be found.
Now a piece of heart-stopping footage has showed the first moment that the soldiers encountered the lost four.
Image:
Facebook/The North Today)Recorded in the dead of night, the soldiers are seen checking their vitals by torchlight and wrapping the exhausted kids in heat blankets.
Officers quickly learned that the children were starving and extremely dehydrated. They were also covered head to toe in insect bites.
But thankfully, those were the extent of their physical injuries.
Image:
AP)The case was thought to have been solved prematurely back in May when President Gustavo Petro falsely claimed the children had been rescued.
Soldiers had found the bodies of the three missing adults, including the kids' mum, among the debris - but the children were nowhere to be found.
President Petro said after the rescue was confirmed that the kids were an "example of survival", adding their story will "remain in history".
Image:
Colombian army/AFP via Getty Ima)"'A joy for the whole country!" he added on Twitter. "The 4 children who were lost 40 days ago in the Colombian jungle appeared alive."
Speaking to AFP, their granddad shared his gratefulness to the Colombian army, but added that "I need a flight or a helicopter to go and get them urgently".
Their grandmother later told Noticias Caracol: "I never lost hope, I was always supporting the search. I feel very happy, I thank President Petro and my 'countrymen' who went through so many difficulties."
Image:
Colombian army/AFP via Getty Ima)The kids' trauma began on the morning of 1 May when their Cessna 206 airplane left an area of the jungle known as Araracuara, bound for the town of San Jose del Guaviare in the Colombian Amazon.
However, within minutes of their 217-mile journey the pilot reported problems with the engine and the plane soon disappeared from radars.
The search operation was mobilised, with three helicopters blasting out the recorded message and throwing hundreds of flyers telling them what to do from a height.
Image:
Colombian army/AFP via Getty Ima)Rescuers later came across some of the children's belongings including a baby's drinking bottle, shoes and scissors near a makeshift shelter.
The on Friday (June 9), the country's military shared pictures on Twitter showing a group of soldiers and volunteers posing with the kids, who had been wrapped in thermal blankets.
The images were captioned: "The union of our efforts made this possible".
