San Salvador, December 27 (RHC-teleSUR), -- A Salvadoran man who went missing 32 years ago during El Salvador's bloody civil war from 1980-92, has finally been reunited with his biological family, according to officials.

Jose Ruben Rivera was taken by the armed forces in 1982 during a military operation in La Joya, a town just east of the capital city of San Salvador. Rivera was only three years old at the time.

After years of searching, the state National Search Commission (CNB) found that, following the war, Rivera had been adopted by another family living in the central province of Zacatecoluca. Rivera was reunited with his biological family on Thursday.

“I am very happy for him to be here with me and to be able to hug him. We have waited so long for him and now God has given us a miracle,” said Margarita Rivera, the mother of Jose Ruben who is currently residing in the U.S. and returned to El Salvador for the reunion.

Hundreds of children disappeared during El Salvador's brutal civil war – a 13 year long conflict between the military-led government and the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), a coalition of left-wing guerrilla groups. Both sides carried out acts of violence, but government troops were found to be responsible for the majority of human rights violations.

The Salvadoran military took the children when they raided rural towns that they suspected of harboring guerrilla fighters or sympathizing with the left-wing movement. Many of the missing children were placed in national orphanages, but some were also traced to international adoptions, while others were simply abducted, according to University of Pittsburgh publication Panoramas.

On August 31, 2011, Rivera's family filed a suit against the Salvadoran government with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), an international body that established measures to search for and locate the missing children.

The CNB is still looking for 129 more children who remain missing, said the IACHR in a statement.