The death toll from the powerful pair of earthquakes that struck Venezuela last week has risen to 1,719, National Assembly President Jorge Rodriguez said on Monday.
This is more than 250 above the 1,450 previously reported. Rodriguez, who is the brother of Venezuela's acting president Delcy Rodriguez, said more than 5,000 people have been injured.
He said 189 of a total of around 800 damaged buildings completely collapsed after the strong earthquakes of magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 on Wednesday evening.
Since the quakes, there have been more than 600 aftershocks, including one of magnitude 4.2 on Monday that triggered an alarm, Rodriguez said. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), which monitors earthquakes, put the strength of the tremor off the country's coast at 4.6.
Emergency teams from Venezuela and numerous other countries are searching under collapsed buildings for what could be tens of thousands of people who may have died, according to a model calculation by the USGS.
However, experts say the chances of finding people alive after 72 hours are extremely low.
Despair is growing among relatives of the victims, as they fear they may not even get the bodies of their loved ones back.
"If there are still survivors under the rubble, every second counts for them now," Simone Walter, emergency relief coordinator at the aid organization Help, said on Monday.
"From our experience of previous earthquakes, we know that only around 10% of all missing people can still be rescued alive – time is running out."
