At least 164 persons died and nearly 1,000 were injured after two earthquakes of magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 struck Venezuela on Wednesday, AFP quoted the country’s interim President Delcy Rodriguez as saying.
Videos posted on social media showed several collapsed buildings, and damage at the airport in the capital city of Caracas. Operations were underway to rescue persons trapped under the debris, she said in an address to the nation on Thursday.
The La Guaira region near the capital was the hardest-hit, Rodriguez added.
The epicentres of both the quakes were close to Caracas, the United States Geological Survey said.
The first quake occurred at 6 pm local time at a depth of nearly 22 km. The second struck a minute later at a depth of 10 km. Shallow earthquakes tend to be more destructive.
The “doublet” earthquake was the most powerful to occur in the region since 1900, the US Geological Survey said.
There were more than 20 aftershocks, AFP reported.
Rodriguez declared a state of emergency and said that the Maiquetia airport in Caracas would close following “serious damage”.
Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello urged the public to leave their homes and said that gas supplies had been cut to several buildings as a precaution, AFP reported. “We have some damaged structures and we don’t want any kind of accident involving gas to occur,” he said.
The US National Tsunami Warning Center said that there was no threat of the quakes having triggered a tsunami.
The quakes were felt in the Colombian capital of Bogota, about 900 km away, AFP reported.
Several countries in central and South America, and the United States offered to help Venezuela.
India also offered assistance. Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday expressed his condolences to the families of those who had died.
Minutes after the twin quakes in Venezuela, a magnitude 6.9 tremor were recorded in northern Japan on Thursday. No casualties or material damage were reported.
Edited by Sara Varghese and Nachiket Deuskar.
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