Officials Arrested for Looting After Venezuela Quakes
Four Venezuelan police officers have been arrested after being accused of taking valuables from the ruins of a collapsed building following the powerful twin earthquakes that struck the South American country last week.
The officials, who had served with Venezuela’s biggest national police service, the Scientific, Penal and Criminalistic Investigation Service Corps (CICPC) were arrested in Playa Grande, according to Venezuela’s state-run news agency.
Playa Grande sits within the nation’s northern La Guaira state that has been hardest-hit by the natural disaster on June 24, when a 7.2 earthquake struck the country less than 40 seconds before a second, 7.5 magnitude quake.
At least 2,295 people have been confirmed dead in the most severe earthquakes to strike Venezuela in over a century. More than 11,000 have been injured, officials say, as rescue teams frantically sifting through the bones of hundreds of destroyed buildings cling to final hopes that they will find more survivors eight days on.
International teams successfully freed 44-year-old Hernán Gil, a security guard who had been trapped in the remains of a building in Playa Grande for more than a week, after roughly 100 hours early on Thursday.
But in the midst of the recovery efforts, videos widely circulated on social media appeared to show people attempting to stop a police officer taking cash from the rubble.
Venezuela’s interior minister, Diosdado Cabello, alleged the ex-officials had committed “shameless, indecent and immoral acts.”
The Venezuelan government, led by interim leader Delcy Rodriguez-who announced a week of national mourning for the victims of the earthquake-has faced increasing anger over its handling of the crisis, which has plunged the country already dealing with stretched health services, economic turmoil and high poverty rates into further chaos.
Some residents in Venezuela called the government’s response haphazard, and said volunteers were stopped by authorities from accessing some of the most devastated areas.
Rescue teams from Colombia and Spain were reportedly held up or stopped from reaching northern Venezuela by airport checks and accreditation issued by Caracas.
Others paint a different picture. Marco Franco, the search and rescue team leader for the Mexican Red Cross, told Newsweek his team didn’t run into issues with Venezuelan authorities as they got to work alongside other relief teams from Saturday.
“Between all of us, we put together an effective response,” he said.
Death Toll Likely To Surge
The death toll is likely to rise further in the coming days as more bodies are recovered. The United Nations said it has ordered 10,000 body bags after speaking with Venezuelan authorities.
But concern is also growing that, in the aftermath of the earthquakes, diseases will spread and more people will die from untreated injuries as the morgues in northern Venezuela overflow and many survivors camp out on the streets with no access to toilets or clean water.
Some of the hospitals in northern Venezuela have reached 900 percent capacity, Rafael Velasquez Garcia, who is heading up the earthquake relief effort for the International Rescue Committee (IRC), a charity that operates in more than 40 countries worldwide, told Newsweek.
Several camp hospitals have sprung up over the past week, and up to 38 health facilities have been damaged or destroyed. One hospital in Caracas and another in La Guaira have completely collapsed, said Carolina De Jesús, the director of U.S.-based non-governmental organization Project HOPE in Venezuela.
Humanitarian teams on the ground say power outages plague entire areas of the city of La Guaira, water networks have been smashed, and phones lines are dead. Roads to hospitals are blocked off by debris and many health workers are still missing.
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This story was originally published July 2, 2026 at 11:24 AM.