A toddler was pulled alive from the rubble in Venezuela six days after a pair of earthquakes devastated the South American country, leaving over 1,900 people dead.
Klieber Moran was recovered early on Tuesday from the Los Corales Garden 1 building in La Guaira state by rescuers from Jordan, Venezuela’s acting president Delcy Rodríguez said on Telegram.
He was taken for medical treatment. His age was given as three by Ms Rodríguez and as two by National Assembly president Jorge Rodríguez.
“We must hold on to the hope of continuing to find people alive beneath the rubble,” Mr Rodríguez said in a televised address.
“Early this morning, a two-year-old boy was rescued and is currently receiving care at a health centre in Caracas.”
He was the only survivor found on the sixth day of ongoing rescue efforts, Venezuelan officials said.
The critical 72-hour window in which survivors were most likely to be found passed days ago, though rescuers continued searching after a series of miraculous rescues, including a 21-year-old man pulled alive after 106 hours, and a father and son freed after four days beneath the rubble.
Two powerful earthquakes of magnitudes 7.2 and 7.5 struck Venezuela less than a minute apart on 25 June, toppling nearly 800 buildings and trapping thousands of people.
The government on Tuesday updated the death toll to more than 1,900 and said around 10,000 people were injured.
Experts say the figures are an undercount as bodies continue to be recovered and morgues struggle to handle the influx.
A civilian tracking website reported over 46,000 people missing and Nasa estimated that 59,000 buildings had been damaged or destroyed, suggesting the number of people affected ran into the hundreds of thousands.
Among the living, a humanitarian crisis is unfolding.
UN agencies expressed concern about the health consequences for thousands of displaced people sleeping in the open or in crowded, unsanitary shelters.
Unicef said that 680,000 children were in need of humanitarian assistance. The agency on Tuesday delivered 47 metric tonnes of supplies, including emergency health kits for medical care, safe births, newborn care, and disease prevention and treatment, UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric noted.
The earthquakes struck the most densely populated coastal areas. They devastated La Guaira state, home to the country’s main airport and a large proportion of the capital city’s population.
More than 2,000 rescue workers from 30 countries had arrived in Venezuela since the disaster, officials said, working alongside local people who in many areas had begun digging through the rubble with their hands before heavy machinery arrived.
Frustration is growing over the government’s response to the emergency, with many residents saying they see little evidence of the 14,000 military and police personnel the authorities say are working on the ground.
