Rescuers dig out Venezuelan man eight days after quakes as death toll nears 2,300

Hundreds of rescuers in Venezuela cheered and embraced Thursday after pulling a 43-year-old man alive from the ruins of a collapsed building eight days after deadly twin earthquakes, AFP journalists witnessed.

With the official death toll nearing 2,300 and huge numbers of people still missing, the rescue of security guard Hernan Gil after so long under the rubble was greeted as a miracle.

Gil was brought out on a stretcher after a painstaking operation to extract him from the collapsed seven-story building where he worked in Catia La Mar, a coastal area almost entirely razed to the ground in the June 24 catastrophe.

"This is truly a miracle," Gil's wife Gusbimar Gonzalez told AFP as rescuers worked to rescue him.

Teams from seven countries -- Venezuela, Chile, the United States, Portugal, Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Mexico -- worked around the clock over three days to reach Gil.

They provided him with more than ten litres of water to keep him hydrated via a hose and installed a tube to provide him with oxygen.

During the final phase of the operation, about thirty people worked in the building's parking area to clear away debris, while two rescuers dug a three-meter tunnel.

"It wasn't easy to reach the exact spot where the victim was located," Cristian Vera, the leader of the Chilean rescue team told AFP.

However, while there have been a few astounding rescues -- a three-year-old boy was found Tuesday six days after the quake -- hope has faded of finding many more survivors.

The focus is now shifting to survival for those who escaped the quakes.

Many are homeless, food and water are becoming scarce and hospitals are stretched to the limit, with experts warning of the risk of disease outbreaks.

'It would take a miracle'

The two powerful quakes, measuring 7.2 and 7.5, shattered entire neighborhoods in oil-rich Venezuela, which has suffered decades of economic crisis that devastated infrastructure and health services.

NASA data shows almost 60,000 buildings were likely damaged or destroyed.

Venezuela's National Assembly President Jorge Rodriguez said Wednesday that the number of deaths had risen to 2,295, and more than 11,000 people were injured.

He said almost 13,000 people had been left homeless -- many of them sleeping in tents on the streets, parks and vacant lots.

Tens of thousands of people remain unaccounted for.

The majority of collapsed buildings in the hardest-hit city of La Guaira, just north of Caracas, have been marked with the letter 'D' for 'deceased' -- a sign they had been searched with no signs of life found.

Relatives, volunteers, and rescue workers were largely focused on retrieving the dead.

In Catia La Mar, about a dozen people struggled to dig through a six-meter-high mound of rubble -- the remains of an eight-story building that collapsed "like a slab sandwich," explained crane operator Manuel Alejos.

"We break through slab by slab to retrieve the bodies...The families need the bodies to say their goodbyes," said the crane operator, adding that he had already pulled seven dead from the structure.

Cesar Gonzalez, 54, a Mexican firefighter and handler of search-and-rescue dogs, gave water to his two dogs, Zeus and Bom.

"One is for detecting the living, the other for cadavers. Just two days ago, there was much more hope. Now, it would take a miracle," to find anyone alive, he said.

'We lost everything'

The World Food Programme on Tuesday appealed for $50 million to feed some 500,000 people for three months in Venezuela.

Police and military personnel were on patrol to prevent looting, which has been widespread.

Queues for aid are growing longer by the day, with many surviving on the goodwill of volunteers and donations from fellow citizens.

On a soccer field, Maria Arteaga, 33, a mother of four, prepared to sleep Wednesday night in an improvised shelter made of tarps and a Venezuelan flag.

"We lost everything, except our lives. We're even barefoot," she told AFP.