Earthquakes in Venezuela: 1,450 dead, 189 buildings completely collapsed

Rescue teams accompanied by sniffer dogs searched for the last survivors on Sunday after two powerful earthquakes struck Venezuela, which left the death toll at 1,450 and 189 buildings completely collapsed.

Tens of thousands of people are missing as 774 buildings were hit on Wednesday in a country plagued for years by an economic crisis and political unrest, and where President Nicolas Maduro was captured by US forces in January.

"The death toll has reached 1,450 people, women and men who lost their lives as a result of the most brutal natural disaster our country has suffered in its entire history," announced National Assembly President Jorge Rodriguez on Sunday.

"The number of buildings damaged or collapsed stands at 774, with 189 having suffered total collapse," he explained. The United Nations estimates the number of missing at around 50,000.

- "Buried underneath" -

International rescue teams are working to save lives, while desperate residents try to free their loved ones trapped under the rubble and collapsed floors of buildings with their bare hands.

In one of the hardest-hit areas, the coastal city of La Guaira, Hector Aguilera was searching for four family members buried under rubble since the successive magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 earthquakes that struck on Wednesday.

Two other members of his family had been rescued. "We don't have the means to get our family out of there. We can't do it alone. They're buried down there: we know they're dead, but we're here," he said. "We have no hope left. All I have left are memories."

The desperate search for survivors continued throughout Sunday.

In the San Bernardino district of Caracas, volunteer rescuers scaled a collapsed building, using drills to break up the concrete and forming human chains to remove the rubble by hand.

In Chacao, another district of the capital, large electronic screens installed on a building — usually intended for advertising — displayed the faces of missing people in the hope of facilitating their location.

"In principle, the bodies are now lifeless, but thank God, we can sometimes find survivors," said a Salvadoran rescuer in Playa Grande, in La Guaira, a coastal city near Caracas.

Nearby, a young boy who miraculously survived was pulled alive from the rubble.

"An 11-year-old boy was rescued alive in Caraballeda. At this time,

"Every life is a source of hope for Venezuela," wrote interim president Delcy Rodriguez on X during the night, attaching a video of the rescue to her message.

Joy erupted in La Guaira when residents rescued a newborn baby. In a video posted on social media, a man broke down in tears as he held the infant in his arms.

- Papal "solidarity" -

"I wish to express my solidarity with our Venezuelan sisters and brothers affected by the recent earthquakes which have caused many deaths and injuries," Pope Leo XIV said Sunday at the Vatican, in Spanish, after the Angelus prayer.

For many hours before the arrival of the first foreign rescuers, Venezuelans had to, as best they could, turn over and search the rubble with their bare hands.

In a country whose economy has been depleted for several years, the lack of construction and lifting equipment has been sorely felt.

"These are mainly locals working with rudimentary tools," Craig Demeillon, 43, an experienced Australian rescuer living in Miami, told Caraballeda.

Moreover, since the government restricted access to the state of La Guaira, it required volunteers to obtain a pass to enter the area. This sparked their anger.

"You need a permit to save lives... can you believe it?" exclaimed Carlos Itriago, 27.

-Seven million people affected-

Faced with public outrage over the local authorities' handling of the crisis, President Delcy Rodriguez highlighted and thanked foreign countries for their assistance.

Twenty-four countries have sent 521 tons of equipment, more than 2,700 rescuers and 86 teams with dogs trained to locate trapped people, she said.

A Spanish team extracted Antonio, a man in his fifties, alive from the rubble, according to images released Sunday by the Spanish Military Emergency Unit (UME).

Nearly seven million people were affected by the two earthquakes, the United Nations estimated on Saturday.

The damage caused is estimated at nearly seven billion dollars, or 6% of the country's GDP, according to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

At least 28 people of Portuguese nationality or origin, seven Chinese, nine Spaniards, two Brazilians, one Chilean, one Uruguayan and one Italian-Venezuelan are among the dead.

Venezuela is a country at risk of earthquakes, even though no major earthquake had been recorded there since 1997.