World News for Students of English

06-07-2026 07:00

Five days after two catastrophic earthquakes struck Venezuela’s northern coast near Caracas, rescue teams are desperately searching the rubble for survivors.

While more than 1,700 people are confirmed dead, the final death toll is expected to rise significantly because approximately 46,000 people remain unaccounted for.

In coastal towns like Caraballeda, volunteers use specialized radar equipment and their bare hands to locate signs of life beneath collapsed buildings. Despite fading hopes, miraculous rescues keep families motivated. A mother and her baby were recently saved after being trapped for days; she kept her son alive by checking his breathing whenever he cried. However, at many disaster sites, official counting has paused.

Critics openly accuse the Venezuelan government of intentionally delaying the publication of accurate casualty numbers and point out a long history of systematically hiding bad news from the public. At the same time, thousands of families continue to wait in fear of bad news.

Difficult words: death toll (the total number of people who die because of a specific bad event, such as an accident, war, or disaster), unaccounted (missing), casualty (a person who is injured or killed in a serious accident, war, or natural disaster).

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