Newborn baby rescued from rubble of Venezuela quake

A newborn baby has been rescued from a fallen building 32 hours after the twin earthquakes that devastated a Venezuelan coastal city.

Video shared on social media Friday shows rescuers working under a floodlight atop collapsed masonry and bringing the infant out to applause late Friday in the hardest-hit city of La Guaira, north of the capital Caracas.

They carefully pass the baby, wrapped in a quilt, from person to person before cleaning the child gently with tissues, the video shows.

According to the user, Andreina Quintero, who published the video on social media, the baby was just 18 days old and was uninjured after being trapped for 32 hours. The child's mother, was rescued an hour after the child.

In a follow-up video later on Friday, Quintero showed the mother in a hospital bed, with a medical worker telling her that the baby did not appear to have injuries.

The medic then suggests that the mother saved the baby by covering the child with her body or another object.

At least 920 people were killed by back-to-back earthquakes on Wednesday of magnitudes 7.2 and 7.5 and thousands more were injured or remain missing.

More than six million affected

Close to seven million people may have been impacted by the twin earthquakes in Venezuela, which have killed nearly 1,000 people and left tens of thousands missing, the United Nations estimated on Saturday.

The UN migration agency said it had examined available population and damage data and had determined that "up to 6.76 million people could be affected by the devastating earthquakes that struck Venezuela on 24th June".

The projections, which include up to two million people in Caracas alone, "highlight the potentially vast humanitarian impact of the disaster," the International Organization for Migration (IOM) warned in a statement.

UN aid chief Tom Fletcher told AFP Friday that more than 50,000 people were missing.

IOM said it had worked with Microsoft AI for Good Lab on initial satellite mapping analysis, which showed that 31.5 percent of buildings in the town of Catia La Mar had been damaged.

Such assessments, it said, were helping humanitarian responders identify the communities most affected and to prioritise where to deliver life-saving aid, even as ground assessments continue.

"The first hours and days after a disaster are decisive. They shape everything that follows," IOM chief Amy Pope said in the statement.

"IOM is scaling up rapidly: prepositioned relief items are already being deployed, and we are working with the Government and partners to deliver emergency shelter, essential supplies, and protection," she added.

– TIMES/AFP