A three-year-old boy has been pulled alive from the rubble six days after devastating earthquakes in Venezuela, a Jordanian rescue team has said.
The child, named as Klieber Morán, was pulled from wreckage in La Guaira state, interim President Delcy Rodríguez said. Rodríguez described the child’s rescue as a source of hope for the country’s people.
It comes as the UN warned that tens of thousands of people were urgently in need of food and shelter.
The death toll from last week’s quakes, with magnitudes of 7.2 and 7.5, has risen to 1,943, with more than 10,000 people injured and tens of thousands more unaccounted for.
The tremors probably damaged or destroyed 58,870 buildings, according to an initial assessment of satellite data from NASA.
The Jordanian civil defence said Klieber had been given first aid treatment, taken to hospital and his vital signs were good. He was being treated in the capital Caracas, Venezuelan National Assembly President Jorge Rodríguez said.
The rescue comes well after the initial three-day period immediately following a quake during which experts say people trapped under debris have the best chance of being found alive.
La Guaira is one of the hardest-hit areas, with many local people trying to carry out rescue efforts themselves.
The UN’s refugee agency said on Tuesday that food shortages were widespread, basic services had broken down and communications had been largely severed in La Guaira.
‘Community tensions are rising as access to assistance remains constrained,’ the UNHCR said in a statement on its website.
Daniela Armas, an 18-year-old vendor in La Guaira who was injured falling from a motorbike when the quakes struck, told AFP that some supplies were being distributed but that people were sometimes fighting over food.
The UNHCR said it needed an initial $15 million to scale up protection, core relief items and temporary shelter support for 30,000 earthquake-affected people over six months.
Meanwhile the World Health Organization said health services were under ‘extreme pressure’.
There was an increased risk of outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases such as measles and diphtheria due to low vaccination coverage, WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier said.
Jorge Rodríguez said Klieber’s rescue showed there was still hope of finding people alive, and that domestic and international teams were still searching through the rubble. Shelters were already open in La Guaira and other states, he added.
International rescue teams from the United States, Mexico and dozens of other countries searched for survivors with trained dogs and heavy equipment.
Some international aid is arriving in the country. A UN spokesperson said a 47-tonne shipment of humanitarian supplies arrived on Tuesday, including emergency health kits for urgent medical care and supplies for safe births, newborn care and disease prevention.
Venezuelans have begun burying the dead who have been found so far, while many more are waiting for the remains of loved ones who are presumed dead.
At a makeshift morgue at La Guaira’s port, Wilker Molalla told AFP he was waiting to identify the remains of his sister, her children and the children of his brother.
‘There were 11 people in my household,’ he said. ‘Only two of us survived because we were at work.’ (BBC News)
