Battle over custody erupted between relatives of her four native children Colombia who survived a plane crash and 40 days alone in the Amazon rainforest, with the father of two of them facing charges of domestic violence.

The Guardian reports the siblings, aged one to 13, remained in hospital on Monday and are expected to remain there for several days while Colombia’s child protection agency talks with family members to determine who should take care of them. after the death of their mother in the plane crash on May 1st.

Astrid Caceres, head of the Colombian Institute of Family Welfare, said in an interview with BLU radio that the children were assigned a social worker at the request of their maternal grandparents, who claim custody with the father of the two youngest.

“We’re going to talk, we’re going to investigate, we’re going to learn a little bit about the situation,” Caceres said, adding that the agency has not ruled out that the children and their mother may have suffered domestic abuse.

“The most important thing right now is the health of children, which is not only physical but also emotional,” she said.

On Sunday, grandfather Narciso Mucutuy accused Manuel Ranoque, the children’s father, of domestic abuse against their mother, Magdalena Mucuty, telling reporters that the children would hide in the woods when fights broke out between the couple.

The father admitted to reporters that there were problems at home, but called it a private family matter and not “gossip to the world.”

Asked if he had assaulted his wife, he said: “Verbally, sometimes, yes. Physically, very little. We had more verbal fights.”

The father said he was not allowed to see the two older children, of whom he is not the biological father. The Family Welfare Institute declined to comment on why this happened.

The children were traveling with their mother from the Amazonian village of Araracuara to the city of San Jose del Guaviare on May 1 when the pilot of the single-engine Cessna plane declared an emergency due to engine failure. The aircraft dropped off radar a short time later and a search began for the three adults and four children on board.

For more than a month the children survived by eating flour and cassava seeds as well as some fruit they found in the rainforest, which they knew as members of the Huitoto Indigenous group.

They were finally found on Friday and flown by helicopter to the capital, Bogota, and then to a military hospital.

Children have told relatives harrowing details of their experience in the jungle. The eldest said their mother was alive for about four days after the accident before she died.

The plane was found two weeks after the crash in a dense patch of rainforest. The bodies of the three adults were recovered, but there was no sign of the children, raising hopes they could be alive.

During weeks of searching, soldiers in helicopters dropped boxes of food into the jungle and planes fired flares at night to illuminate the ground for rescue crews. Rescuers also used loudspeakers to broadcast a message from the children’s grandmother telling them to stay put.

The children were eventually found about 5 kilometers from the crash in a small clearing. Authorities said rescuers had come within 20 to 50 meters (70 to 160 feet) of the scene on several occasions but had not found them.