Venezuela Begins Burial of Quake Victims; US-Aid Port Reopens

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Over 1,700 people have been confirmed dead, and tens of thousands are still missing after powerful back-to-back earthquakes struck Venezuela. The US military has reopened a key seaport in the hardest-hit area, allowing aid to flow in.

Dozens of relatives from the devastated region waited outside the makeshift morgue for news of their families. Forensic personnel in blue uniforms examined the corpses, while nearby buildings turned into mountains of rubble were being dug through by rescuers and volunteers.

A 21-year-old man, Aaron Levi, was rescued Monday in the coastal town of Tanaguarena, a video shared by a photographer who witnessed the operation to pull him out showed. The UN says that some seven million people in Venezuela will be affected by the disaster, with the quakes knocking a $6.7 billion hole in the economy — or 6 percent of its GDP.

The Port of La Guaira re-opened, where an AFP correspondent observed a warehouse storing hundreds of unidentified bodies encased in white and black body bags as well as a few coffins. The USS Fort Lauderdale was docked and delivering aid.

The government has militarized La Guaira and imposed a permit requirement to enter the disaster zone. Residents are not hiding their anger over the government’s slow and limited aid in a country mired in a deep crisis that has driven millions to emigrate in recent years.

A cry of 'Mom, I love you!' rose above a steady, low sobbing and the sound of shovels mixing cement when workers began to seal the niche of Sergio Vergara's nephew, who was found in a collapsed building in La Guaira. Vergara was the one who found him, along with his entire family.

The search and burials continue, with politics never far from mind. Opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Corina Machado accused interim president Delcy Rodriguez’s government of preventing her return to the country.

Machado went into exile in December, after spending more than a year in hiding. She staged a dramatic escape from the country to receive the award in Oslo. 'I am ready and close to Venezuela and will do whatever it takes for us to meet there,' the opposition figure said in a video on X, after denouncing what she said was the government’s closure of the airspace to prevent her return.