Colombian authorities have raised the death toll to more than 280 and the number of injured to more than 3,970 due to the magnitude 7.4 earthquake on the Richter scale that shook the northwest of the Latin American country earlier this week.
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Specifically, 285 people have lost their lives and 3,975 have been injured, five more dead and five more injured than the latest count on Thursday, while 354 remain missing, according to the most recent estimate from the National Unit for Disaster Risk Management (UNGRD), which adds that so far the number of rescued people amounts to 348.
Regarding rescue efforts, the director of the UNGRD, David Tamayo, has stated that although the priority of their personnel is “to continue searching for people trapped” under the rubble, they are reaching a point where the probability of finding survivors “is running out.”
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“The order is not to stop searching and to find all those people reported missing, and not to rest until (…) finding those people, hopefully alive, or recovering their bodies,” Tamayo emphasized at a press conference from the San Carlos Palace in Bogotá.
So far, of the 260 bodies received by the National Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences, 246 have been identified, of which 17 are minors.
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