A three-year-old boy has been rescued alive from beneath the rubble six days after powerful earthquakes struck Venezuela, in what rescuers have described as a rare moment of hope amid widespread devastation.
The child, identified as Klieber Morán, was pulled from wreckage in La Guaira state by a Jordanian civil defence search team assisting local rescue operations, according to Venezuelan officials.
Interim President Delcy Rodríguez described the rescue as a “source of hope for our people,” as emergency teams continue searching through collapsed buildings more than a week after the disaster.
The Jordanian rescue team said the boy received immediate first aid and was transported to hospital, where his vital signs were reported as stable. Venezuelan officials confirmed he is being treated in the capital, Caracas.
The rescue comes well beyond the critical 72-hour survival window typically considered the most crucial period for locating people trapped under debris. Despite this, international and domestic teams continue operations across heavily affected regions.
The earthquakes, measuring 7.2 and 7.5 magnitude, have left a catastrophic toll, with the death count rising to 1,943, more than 10,000 injured, and tens of thousands still unaccounted for, according to official figures.
An initial satellite assessment by NASA estimates that nearly 58,870 buildings may have been damaged or destroyed, underlining the scale of the destruction.
The United Nations has warned of worsening humanitarian conditions, including widespread food shortages, collapsing basic services, and growing pressure on already overwhelmed health facilities. Aid agencies say urgent shelter, food, and medical support are needed for hundreds of thousands of survivors.
As rescue efforts continue, authorities say international teams from multiple countries remain on the ground, while humanitarian shipments have begun arriving to support relief operations.
For many in La Guaira, however, the search for survivors continues alongside the growing task of recovering the dead and identifying victims of one of the country’s worst natural disasters in recent years.
