Venezuela earthquake death toll climbs past 1,400 as rescuers race the clock
The death toll from the back-to-back earthquakes that struck northern Venezuela has risen above 1,400, with roughly 51,000 people still listed as missing, Al Jazeera reported . The two main quakes, measured at magnitude 7.2 and 7.5, devastated the coastal state of La Guaira and neighbourhoods around Caracas, where a supermarket in Caraballeda collapsed.
A magnitude 4.8 aftershock hit roughly 70km west of the capital on Saturday, complicating recovery work already hampered by mobile and internet outages in the worst-hit areas. Officials said about 1,600 foreign rescue workers had reached the country by Saturday, but cautioned that survival becomes far less likely beyond the first 72 hours after a quake — a threshold many trapped victims have now passed.
Residents have criticised the government’s organisation of the recovery, describing chaotic conditions as families search for relatives still buried under rubble. The scale of the toll, if confirmed, would make this one of the deadliest disasters in Venezuela’s modern history, striking a country already weakened by years of economic and political crisis.