The United States military repaired and reopened a key seaport in the hardest hit area of Venezuela on Monday, as the country began burying more than 1,700 victims of twin earthquakes that have left tens of thousands still missing.
Five days after powerful back-to-back quakes flattened entire neighborhoods, the task of recovering the dead loomed large, and hopes of finding survivors faded.
By the latest official count, some 1,700 are dead, and 5,000 are injured, with no governmental word on the number missing. Other estimates place these in the tens of thousands.
The Port of La Guaira re-opened, where an AFP correspondent observed a warehouse storing hundreds of unidentified bodies encased in white and black body bags as well as a few coffins. The USS Fort Lauderdale was docked and delivering aid.
Dozens of relatives from this devastated region waited outside the makeshift morgue for news of their families as forensic personnel in blue uniforms examined the corpses.
