A newborn baby has been rescued from the rubble of a collapsed building 32 hours after twin earthquakes devastated Venezuela’s coastal city of La Guaira.
Videos shared on social media on Friday showed rescue workers using floodlights to search through the debris before pulling the infant to safety amid applause from onlookers in the hardest-hit city, north of the capital, Caracas.
The footage shows rescuers carefully passing the baby, wrapped in a quilt, from one person to another before gently cleaning the child with tissues.
According to Andreina Quintero, who shared the videos online, the baby was just 18 days old and appeared unhurt despite spending 32 hours trapped beneath the collapsed building.
The infant’s mother was rescued about an hour after the child.
In a follow-up video posted later on Friday, Quintero showed the mother recovering in a hospital bed, where a medical worker informed her that the baby showed no apparent injuries.
The healthcare worker suggested the mother may have shielded the infant with her body or another object during the collapse, helping protect the child.
The dramatic rescue came as Venezuela continued to grapple with the aftermath of the twin earthquakes, measuring magnitudes 7.2 and 7.5, which struck on Wednesday.
Authorities said at least 920 people had been killed, while thousands more were injured or remain missing.
The United Nations on Saturday estimated that nearly seven million people could have been affected by the disaster.
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) said its analysis of population and damage data indicated that up to 6.76 million people may have been impacted by the earthquakes, including about two million in Caracas alone.
The agency warned that the figures underscored the disaster’s potentially vast humanitarian consequences.
Entire buildings were reduced to rubble in La Guaira, one of the areas worst affected by the powerful twin tremors.
