An 18-day-old baby has been pulled alive from a collapsed building 32 hours after twin earthquakes devastated the coastal city of La Guaira in Venezuela.
Rescue teams carried the newborn, wrapped in a pink quilt, from the rubble late Friday as crowds cheered and clapped.
Video shared on social media shows rescuers passing the infant from person to person under a floodlight before cleaning the child gently with tissues.
According to Andreina Quintero, who published the video, the baby was uninjured after being trapped for 32 hours. “The baby did not appear to have injuries,” a medical worker told the child’s mother in a hospital video later Friday. efd1
The child’s mother, Dayana Patiño, was rescued about an hour after her son.
Rescuers said she had held the baby tightly in her arms while trapped under debris and was unable to breastfeed him during that time.
A medic suggested the mother may have saved the baby by covering the child with her body or another object.
“She fought to keep her baby safe. It was a miracle,” one rescuer said after both mother and child were extracted without fractures.
La Guaira, north of Caracas, was one of the worst-hit areas after two quakes of magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 struck within 39 seconds of each other on Wednesday.
Authorities have reported at least 920 to 1,430 deaths, more than 3,200 injured, and over 50,000 people still missing.
The rescue of the newborn and her mother has been described as one of the most uplifting stories to emerge from the disaster.
