'My mom is dead': Children's first words after 40-day Amazon jungle ordeal

"I'm hungry" and "my mom is dead" were the first words uttered by the four children missing for 40 days in the Colombian jungle when they were found, members of the rescue group said in a televised interview.

After wandering alone for more than a month, the Huitoto Indigenous children - ages 13, nine, five, and one - were rescued and airlifted out of the Amazon on Friday, and were recovering two days later in a military hospital in the capital Bogota.

Interviewed on Sunday on public broadcast channel RTVC, members of the initial group to find the kids, themselves members of the Indigenous population, recounted the first moments after meeting the children.

The four children had been lost in the jungle since May 1, when the Cessna 206 in which they were traveling crashed.

The pilot had reported engine problems only minutes after taking off from a deep Amazon area known as Araracuara on the 350-kilometer (217-mile) journey to the town of San Jose del Guaviare.

The bodies of the pilot, the children's mother and another adult were all found at the crash site, where the plane sat almost vertical in the trees.

The children's father, speaking to the press on Sunday outside the hospital, said that his wife had been severely injured in the May 1 crash, but that she did not die until four days later, her children beside her.

"Before she died, their mom told them something like, 'You guys get out of here. You guys are going to see the kind of man your dad is, and he's going to show you the same kind of great love that I have shown you.'"

Magdalena Mucutuy, the children's mother, was an Indigenous leader.

Seeds, fruits, roots

It was in part down to the local knowledge of the children and Indigenous adults involved in the search alongside Colombian troops that the youths were ultimately found alive despite the threats of jaguars and snakes, and relentless downpours which may have prevented them from hearing possible calls from search parties.

"The survival of the children is a sign of the knowledge and relationship with the natural environment that is taught starting in the mother's womb," according to the National Organization of Indigenous Peoples of Colombia.

The children ate seeds, fruits, roots and plants that they identified as edible from their upbringing in the Amazon region, Luis Acosta of the National Indigenous Organization of Colombia told AFP.

Petro touted the success as a "meeting of Indigenous and military knowledge" that had demonstrated a "different path towards a new Colombia."