Thirty-three people have been rescued this weekend after Venezuela's devastating twin earthquakes, the country's interim president says, including several children while tens of thousands remained unaccounted for with time for finding additional survivors running short.
The death toll from Wednesday's twin earthquakes rose above 1400 as of Saturday as foreign rescue teams poured into coastal La Guaira, the hardest-hit state.
Families and volunteers spent days pulling survivors and bodies from the rubble before the arrival of the more than 1600 foreign rescue workers, often complaining of scant heavy equipment and a limited official presence, as hundreds of aftershocks deepened damage and kept residents on edge.
The government - headed by interim President Delcy Rodriguez since her predecessor was removed by the US in a January raid - had thanked civilian volunteers ferrying aid to La Guaira but then heavily tightened access to the road, saying traffic was preventing efficient movement of emergency vehicles and that only accredited people could use the roadway.
Although the government has given a figure of hundreds missing or trapped, just under 50,000 people were listed as unaccounted for on a website promoted by the country's political opposition on Sunday.
The figure is a slight decline from Saturday, when 55,000 people were marked as missing.
The US Geological Survey estimated more than 10,000 deaths were possible from the magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 quakes, which would place them among Latin America's deadliest of the last century.
The clock is ticking for rescuing people still living amid the rubble.
"There exists a window of roughly three days, 72 hours, where the probability afterwards decreases that you can save people alive," Sebastian Eugster, the leader of the Swiss rescue team, told Reuters on Saturday.
The 80-strong team had found multiple people alive in the rubble thanks to alerts from their eight search dogs but had not been able to pull them out in time to save them, he added.
Saturday evening marked 72 hours since the quakes.
The Swiss team will jointly define with other teams and local authorities when rescue operations will end, Eugster said, but will remain on the ground to help with other aid work.
The US State Department hailed the rescue of an infant by US rescue crews on Saturday, posting a video on X showing helmet-clad rescuers removing the blanket-wrapped and wailing child from the rubble.
A Colombian rescue team saved an 11-year-old boy, Moises, who had been trapped three metres deep in rubble, after identifying his location with a scanner, Reuters TV reported.
He was removed on a stretcher with a broken arm, his eyes covered by cloth to protect them from the shock of daylight.
His mother and sister were killed.
Mexican rescuers working at a collapsed building in the town of Caraballeda rescued another 11-year-old boy, Rodriguez posted on X late on Saturday, showing crews carrying a small figure on a stretcher out of the rubble.
"In these hours each life is hope for Venezuela," Rodriguez said, as the government also shared a video of a young man being removed from ruins by rescuers.
The government also posted videos of Rodriguez meeting with international rescuers, where she gave the figure of people saved on Saturday.
The government has also said more than 3000 people were injured and a similar figure was living in shelters.
In Caraballeda on Saturday, US rescuers worked alongside remaining civilian volunteers, some of whom were searching for their own family members.
Rescuers had originally spray-painted the rubble with the name of the apartment building that used to stand there.
By Saturday evening they had marked debris with coding indicating they believed no living person remained in the ruins.
