A woman was pulled from the rubble alive in dramatic scenes after an earthquake in Venezuela killed hundreds and inflicted devastation on the South American nation.
At least 235 people are dead and rescuers are desperately searching for nearly 50,000 people missing following back-to-back earthquakes that hit Venezuela on Wednesday afternoon.
But in a rare scene of hope amid a wave of grief, Graciela Mora was conscious as she was pulled from the rubble by emergency workers and volunteers, speaking to a camera about her ordeal while she still lay on a stretcher on the rubble.
Follow the latest developments on the earthquake here.
"When the earthquake started, I clung as tightly as I could to the doorframe so tightly that I broke my finger,” Ms Mora said, squinting as she was exposed to sunlight for the first time in hours.
“I held on tight, really tight, until all the floors collapsed.”
Reaching out with her left arm, she appeared to speak about a friend or relative who was in the building with her: “And then I saw her hand like that and grabbed it. So that she could go.
“It hasn’t given me a chance to cry and it still hasn’t given me a chance to cry.”
On Friday, emergency services continued to trawl through mounds of rubble after tremors of magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 struck within 39 seconds of each other west of the capital Caracas. The health minister said nearly 4,300 people were injured.
Thousands have been left homeless in a nation already impoverished by decades of economic and political turmoil, which has triggered an exodus of millions and eroded basic infrastructure and services.
At least 250 buildings have been damaged or destroyed, the government confirmed. At least eight hospitals, the Venezuelan Red Cross and the French embassy were among buildings reported badly damaged.
Yamileth Jimenez said her 19-year-old son is “under the slabs and there's no machinery to get him out”. He is in the debris of their seven-story apartment building in La Guaira city on the coast outside Caracas, she said.
Many live in flimsy hillside slums called ‘barrios’.
"My building is uninhabitable and now I have nothing. It’s just me and my son, and I have no family in the country," said Suhayl Sarquiz, 50, who lost her job a few months ago.
"It's a tragedy," said Beatriz Rodriguez, 60, whose nephew's legs were amputated after he was crushed in the quakes. Another nephew was killed.
Foreign rescue teams are arriving in the country as distraught citizens and Venezuelan rescuers comb through shattered buildings, using bare hands and torches in places where power was down.
Pedro Perez, 64, said his family “lost everything”. Mr Perez, an upholstery workshop owner who said he had lost both his home and business and was sleeping on the street with his wife and children, added: “We hope help arrives quickly."
Interim president Delcy Rodriguez declared a state of emergency after the earthquakes caused building collapses in the capital and forced the closure of the nation’s main international airport.
The US Geological Survey said there was a 44 per cent probability that fatalities could exceed 10,000.
Rodriguez, who took over when the U.S. seized her ally and former leader Nicolas Maduro in January, thanked both US president Donald Trump and Russian president Vladimir Putin for their efforts in helping the response.
Washington eased sanctions to allow earthquake aid that would otherwise be prohibited.
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