Colombian President Gustavo Petro has officially retracted an announcement he made declaring that four missing siblings, purported survivors of a May 1 plane crash, had been found.
The children’s mother, Magdalena Valencia, perished in the incident, as did pilot Hernando Murcia and passenger Herman Hernandez.
An initial tweet suggesting that the Mucutuy siblings — Lesly, a 13-year-old girl; and boys Soleiny, 9, Tien, 4, and Cristin, 11 months — had been found was put out on Mr. Petro’s Twitter account Wednesday evening. That tweet was deleted later.
On Thursday, Mr. Petro clarified the situation, matching the Colombian military’s report that it had not made contact with the children and could not corroborate their whereabouts or survival.
“I have decided to delete the tweet because the information provided by the [Colombian Institute of Family Welfare] could not be confirmed. I’m sorry about what happened. The Military Forces and the indigenous communities will continue in their tireless search to give the country the news it is waiting for,” Mr. Petro tweeted.
The Institute of Family Welfare, which Mr. Petro had indirectly cited in his Wednesday tweet, had received its information on the family’s survival secondhand from indigenous communities deep in the Colombian interior.
The company that owned the Cessna that crashed on May 1, Avianline Charters, has also received secondhand reports that the children had been sighted, but could not confirm them.
Soruce : https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2023/may/19/colombian-president-petro-retracts-tweet-announcin/?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS