What are the chances that 3 very young children ages, nine, five, and one survive 40 days in the wild jungle with only a 13-year-old looking after them? The story you are about to read is beyond incredulous and doesn’t even seem real (but it is). Any number of things could have happened to these native children but they were spared. Wild animals roam the Amazon Jungle and it’s a miracle they survived. The children’s mother and two other adults died in the plane wreck.

Four children who survived weeks alone in Colombia’s Amazon jungle have been reunited with relatives as they recover in hospital.

The siblings, aged 13, nine, five and one, are “very weak” but “happy to see their family”, said their grandfather, Fidencio Valencia.

They are speaking a little and two of them have begun playing, officials say.

The four children were found on Friday after more than a month of searching by the military and local people.

They went missing after the plane they were in crashed on 1 May. Their mother and two pilots were killed in the crash.

Rescuers tracked them down after spotting signs in the jungle, including footprints and fruit that had been bitten into.

Two of the children, the one-year-old baby and five-year-old, spent their birthdays in the jungle, as the eldest Lesly, 13, guided them through the ordeal.

They survived by eating flour that they found in the plane’s wreckage and then seeds, Mr Valencia said.

Colombia’s Defence Minister Ivan Velasquez, who visited them in the hospital with President Gustavo Petro on Saturday, praised Lesly for taking care of her younger siblings.

“It is thanks to her, her value and her leadership, that the three others were able to survive, with her care, her knowledge of the jungle,” Mr Velasquez said.

“In general the children, the boy and the girls are in an acceptable state, according to the medical reports they are out of danger.”

You can read the rest of the story by clicking here. By Aoife Walsh BBC News