A mother and her baby were rescued Wednesday in a Colombian jungle four days after their airplane crashed.
Maria Nelly Murillo and her nearly 1-year-old son were in the cabin of a twin-engine Cessna and, when it crashed on Saturday, authorities believe a load of fish may have cushioned their
landing, The Associated Press reported. The pilot, Capt. Carlos Mario Ceballos, was killed.
Murillo had injuries and burns, but the infant was not hurt, the AP said. The mother said she left the plane and climbed a nearby hill because she was scared the plane might explode. Rescuers reached the plane two days after the crash.
"It's a miracle. It is a very wild area and it was a catastrophic accident," Colonel Hector Carrascal, commander of the Colombian Air
Force, told Agence France-Presse. "His mother's spirit must have given him strength to survive."
A 14-person rescue team had been searching for Murillo and the baby with little luck; they finally used speakers to broadcast throughout the forest, and that was how the pair was
found, The Guardian reported.
"We saw how the plane was, there was food, some peeled coconuts as if they had used them to peel out the water and feed themselves, we did not see her body anywhere, we did not even find traces of blood," Rafael Caviedes, a search and rescue official, told Colombian newspaper El Tiempo. The account
was quoted by The Telegraph.
The cause of the plane crash is being investigated. The plane was on a route from Quibdó to Nuquí, a town on the coast.
Related Stories: