A TODDLER HAS been rescued after spending three days alone in a forbidding Siberian forest populated by wolves and bears.
Three-year-old Russian boy Tserin Dopchut sparked a huge land and air search across the Mongolian border when he wandered into the woodland on Sunday 18 September, the Siberian Times reported.
He had been playing with dogs near his great-grandmother near his home in Khut, a village of around 400 people in the Piy-Khemsky district of the Tuva republic, near the vast country’s long Mongolian border.
Tserin was wearing shoes – but no coat – when he wandered into the taiga, the snow forest which covers much of Russia and circles the globe.
“Then he found a dry place under a larch tree and slept there between the roots,” Regional head Sholban Kara-Ool said.
The whole village is throwing a party to celebrate his survival. He was given the second name of Mowgli.
The toddler had a small bar of chocolate in his pocket, and may have been following a puppy.
More than 100 people were involved in the search effort over day and night, while a helicopter traversed an area of 120 sq km.
After 72 hours in the wildnerness, he was eventually found on Wednesday in a makeshift bed.
Ayas Saryglar, the regional emergencies chief, told the Siberian Times that Tserin had survived a “very dangerous” ordeal.
“The River Mynas is fast and cold. If a small child fell in, it would be certain death.”
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