Rescuers used heavy machinery and their bare hands on Friday in a race to save survivors of deadly twin earthquakes in Venezuela that killed at least 235 people, hurt thousands and flattened scores of buildings.
International rescuers and aid have begun arriving to help a nation struggling to respond two days after its strongest quake in well over a century struck west of Caracas.
Rubble from collapsed buildings had trapped more than 200 people under debris, National Assembly chief Jorge Rodriguez said Thursday.
At the site of one of those flattened buildings, workers used sledgehammers to break the debris and called for “absolute silence” in order to hear survivors, AFP footage showed.
Health Minister Carlos Alvarado reported the death toll had risen to at least 235, with around 4,300 people injured.
Rescue efforts have moved slowly, with bodies still visible under debris hours after the quakes, while time ran out for some of those who were trapped and injured.
But help has begun to arrive, with a senior American military official landing in Venezuela’s capital Caracas to oversee US relief efforts.
Nations around the world have pledged send rescuers, money and aid, with the United States saying it was deploying two warships, transport planes and helicopters and mobilizing $150 million in aid.
In the worst-hit state of La Guaira, north of Caracas, Amparo del Giudice dug with her bare hands at a huge mound of concrete in search of her son.
“It is a lot of rock, and with bare hands it is impossible,” she said, exasperated and flailing at the rubble.
Elsewhere, a young girl died after crying out for help for hours as onlookers listened helplessly, local residents told AFP.
“We need people… military personnel, to come and help so we can get her out,” said resident Dani Rizo, 48.
The dead include foreigners, with Two Spaniards, one Portuguese national, two Brazilians, one Italian-Venezuelan, and two Chinese nationals are among those killed.
The Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs also reported on Friday that 80 Spaniards remain unaccounted for.
A rescue worker, speaking off the record, told AFP conditions were precarious, with a shortage of trained personal and significant technical limitations.
Interim president Delcy Rodriguez visited La Guaira on Thursday after the area was declared a “disaster zone.”
AFP reporters witnessed residents looting a local supermarket in the city.
Venezuela’s director of the International Rescue Committee, Nicole Kast, described the situation as catastrophic.
Offers of support poured in from around the world, with Switzerland, Spain, France, Portugal and Mexico among those sending specialists and rescue teams to Venezuela.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio earlier promised a “whole-of-government response. It’ll be big, it’ll be fast, and it’ll be effective.”
Washington is closely involved in oil-rich Venezuela after US forces ousted and arrested president Nicolas Maduro in January.
China, India, Brazil and even war-battered Iran offered help, while Pope Leo XIV has sent an initial 100,000 euros in aid to the country.
UN chief Antonio Guterres said he was “deeply saddened” by the disaster as the global body vowed to assist Venezuela.
Venezuela’s northern coast sits on a boundary between the Caribbean and South American tectonic plates, but has not experienced a significant quake since 1997, when 73 people died. Another quake in 1967 killed 236 people.
Wednesday’s 7.5-magnitude earthquake was the most powerful since October 29, 1900, when a 7.7-magnitude tremor struck offshore.
“Very strong” verification is needed in Iran following the Middle East conflict to ensure that it does not develop nuclear weapons, the UN atomic watchdog chief said on Friday.
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) head Rafael Grossi’s remarks come as the United States and Iran negotiate a broader agreement to end the war, with Tehran’s nuclear program a key sticking point.
“I think the objective of this (recent US-Iran preliminary) agreement is to ensure that there is no development of nuclear weapons in Iran. The government of Iran has declared quite clearly that this is not their intention,” Grossi told reporters in Japan.
“But of course intentions are not enough. We have to have a very strong verification system in place… as soon as is practicable,” AFP quoted the IAEA chief as saying.
Grossi said the watchdog had also “barely initiated” talks with Iran following its preliminary agreement with the United States about what to do with Tehran’s uranium stockpile.
“Initial conversations have taken place… We expect this work to pick up soon,” Grossi said.
Before the conflict, the IAEA estimated that Iran had 440 kilograms (970 pounds) of uranium enriched to 60 percent.
That is close to the 90 percent needed to make a bomb and well above the 3.67-percent limit set by a now-defunct 2015 agreement with Iran.
Iran suspended cooperation with the IAEA after Israel and the United States launched a previous wave of attacks in June 2025, and its inspectors have not seen the material since.
Under the terms of the preliminary agreement between Tehran and Washington, this stockpile is meant to be “downblended” under IAEA supervision.
Grossi said the “widespread impression” was that the stockpile remains where it was before June 2025 near Iran’s Isfahan facility.
However, that facility was bombed and Iran said that it does not plan to allow the IAEA to inspect sites that were attacked.
Grossi also said on Friday that an alternative to diluting could be shipping the enriched uranium out of Iran.
“The memorandum of understanding, as you may have noted, includes the possibility of downblending as one alternative,” Grossi said.
“It could also be shipped out directly. It would perhaps be more complicated, but there are a few technical alternatives to deal with the material,” he said.
Iran has consistently denied seeking to acquire an atomic bomb, while remaining adamant about its right to operate a full-scale civilian nuclear program.
Before the 12-day war in 2025, Iran as a signatory to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty — unlike Israel, which is widely assumed to have atomic weapons — allowed the IAEA to inspect its nuclear sites under its safeguards deal with the Vienna-based body.
Iran agreed a landmark nuclear deal with six big powers in 2015 limiting its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief, but US President Donald Trump walked away from the agreement during his first term.
The rate of people dying in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody has reached its highest level in over a decade, two rights groups said on Thursday.
According to a joint report by Human Rights Watch and Physicians for Human Rights, at least 52 deaths have been reported in ICE holding facilities since US President Donald Trump’s second term began in January 2025.
Trump has made combating illegal immigration a top priority of his second term.
“We have seen the death rate in ICE custody skyrocket,” Reagan Williams, a HRW researcher who co-authored the report, told AFP.
“Instead of taking action to address this crisis and protect the lives and health of those in custody, we’ve seen the administration pour its resources into subjecting more and more people to prolonged detention,” she said.
From January 2025 to January 2026, the annual mortality rate in ICE custody was up 140% compared with a year earlier – an increase disproportionate to the higher detainee population, the report said.
A spokesperson for the US Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, denied the reported spike in deaths.
“Consistent with data over the last decade, death rates in custody under the Trump administration are 0.009% of the detained population,” he said.
But June 25’s report found that, as immigration detention centers have grown, medical care has been lagging, partly due to crowding and people spending longer in custody.
“As bed space has rapidly expanded, we have maintained a higher standard of care than most prisons that hold US citizens – including providing access to proper medical care,” the spokesperson said. “For many illegal aliens, this is the best healthcare they have received their entire lives,” he added.
Japanese airlines cancelled more than 100 flights on Friday as two tropical storms barreled towards the archipelago, with authorities advising evacuations in some areas because of possible flooding and landslides.
Severe tropical storm Mekkhala was downgraded from a typhoon but still carried gusts of up to 144 kilometers (89 miles) per hour, according to forecasters, with heavy rain already pounding parts of southern and western Japan.
The weather system was expected to skirt the islands of Kyushu and Shikoku over the weekend and potentially converge with tropical storm Higos, which was also swirling further out in the Pacific.
That could result in the atmospheric phenomenon known as the Fujiwhara effect when two storms interact, making forecasting their movements and strengths more difficult.
Japan Airlines and All Nippon Airways cancelled a total of 120 flights to and from the southern regions of Okinawa and Kagoshima, AFP reported.
The Kyoto region advised several thousand residents to evacuate, warning of potential landslides, as footage from public broadcaster NHK showed a raging brown river running through the area.
Officials in Kyoto and Osaka said water levels in rivers were rising and warned that vigilance was required because of the threat of flooding.
Automaker Toyota suspended operations at a plant in Kyushu because of road closures caused by heavy rain, while Nissan also said it planned to halt some production lines, Kyodo News reported.
The Japanese military also cancelled the planned maiden flight of a V-22 Osprey transport aircraft to Miyako Island that was part of joint exercises with the United States, Kyodo said.
In Taiwan, more than 1,600 people were evacuated from their homes, and schools and offices were shut in several areas, as Mekkhala triggered torrential rain, floods and landslides across the island.
No casualties were recorded, but authorities warned on Friday of potentially dangerous debris flows in mountainous areas of Hualien county in the east as well as in Kaohsiung and Pingtung in the south, where the weather forecasting agency said as much as 88cm (34.6 inches) of rain had fallen since Thursday.
Scores of people living downstream from a recently detected barrier lake in a rugged area of Hualien have left their homes, a local official said. Some train lines were suspended.
