CNN —Eating cassava flour helped save the lives of four children found alive in the Amazon jungle more than a month after their plane crashed, according to a Colombian military special forces official. The children ate “three kilograms (six pounds) of farina,” a coarse cassava flour commonly used by indigenous tribes in the Amazon region, said spokesperson Pedro Arnulfo Sánchez Suárez. The children’s mother Magdalena Mucutuy Valencia was killed in the plane crash on May 1, leaving them alone and stranded in the Amazon jungle. The children’s disappearance sparked a massive military-led search operation that saw more than one hundred Colombian special forces troops and over 70 indigenous scouts combing the deep forest. They told officials that they had found a dog – a Belgian Shepherd search dog named Wilson that belonged to special forces.

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Persons: farina, Pedro Arnulfo Sánchez, ” Suárez, “, ”, Ranoque, Cristin Ranoque, What’s, Ivan Velasquez, Magdalena Mucutuy Valencia, Hernando Murcia Morales, Herman Mendoza Hernández, Belgian Shepherd, Wilson, Suárez, Gustavo Petro, ” Petro Organizations: CNN, Colombian Air Force, Colombian Defense, Colombian Locations: Colombian, Bogota, Belgian, Colombia