Four children - including a baby - lost in a jungle after a plane crash nearly one month ago are thought to still be alive, army officials say.
Searches are ongoing for the youngsters - aged 13, nine, four - and the 11-months-old baby following the light aircraft crash in the southeast of Colombia on May 1. The youngest three are understood to be brothers.
The crash claimed the lives of the three adults on board: the brothers' mother Magdalena Mucutui Valencia, the pilot, and an Indigenous leader.
But rescue team leader, General Pedro Sanchez, said today: "Based on the evidence, we concluded that the children are alive.
"If they were dead, it would be easy to find them because they would be still and the sniffer dogs would find them."
A footprint found on the muddy ground in the jungle is now believed to be that of Lesly, the eldest of the missing children.
There was, though, no sign of the children when the wreckage was recovered by the Colombian military.
More than 100 people - including soldiers - are involved in the search for the four youngsters.
Satellite images have revealed a path the kids took from the plane wreck, and rescuers have come across some of their belongings, a makeshift shelter and a half-eaten fruit.
Last week, they found a pair of shoes and a nappy.
The Cessna 206 airplane left a jungle area known as Araracuara heading for the town of San Jose del Guaviare in the Colombian Amazon on May 1.
But minutes after starting the 217-mile journey, the pilot reported problems with the engine and the plane disappeared from radars.
Between May 15 and 16, soldiers found the bodies of the three adults and the debris of the plane stuck vertically in the thick vegetation, its nose destroyed.
The air force had dumped 10,000 flyers into the forest with instructions in Spanish, and the children's own Indigenous Huitoto language, telling them to stay put.
The leaflets also included survival tips, and the military has dropped food parcels and bottled water for the children.
Rescuers have also been broadcasting a message recorded by the children's grandmother, urging them to stay put so the soldiers can find them.
On Monday and Tuesday, soldiers found the bodies of the pilot and two adults who had been flying from a jungle location to San Jose del Guaviare, one of the main cities in Colombia's east where grasslands give way to Amazon rainforest.
Giant trees that can grow up to 40 meters tall and heavy rainfall have made the search difficult.
Authorities have not said what caused the plane crash.
Preliminary information from the Colombian civil aviation authority believes that the children escaped the plane and set off into the rainforest to find help.
The Colombian military said efforts to find the children increased after they found a "shelter built in an improvised way with sticks and branches", indicating there were survivors.
The family are from the Huitoto people, an indigenous group in south-eastern Colombia and northern Peru.
