At least 188 people are known to have died and hundreds more injured in Venezuela after the country was hit by two powerful earthquakes late on Wednesday afternoon, writes The Guardian.

Thousands more people are feared dead as rescue crews work through the rubble along the shattered north coast.

A state of emergency has been declared by Venezuela’s interim president Delcy Rodríguez, who has spoken to US secretary of state Marco Rubio and been “in constant contact” with the Trump administration, which has pledged USD 150m in aid.

More than 100 buildings collapsed in La Guaira, a small coastal state north of Caracas that was hardest hit by the earthquakes, said the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha). The level of devastation is overwhelming local authorities, Ocha said. Besides La Guaira, the worst affected regions were the capital of Caracas as well as the states of Miranda, Aragua, Carabobo and Falcón, Rodríguez said.

One of the quakes measured in at 7.5 magnitude, making it the most powerful tremor to hit the country since 1900. According to the US Geological Survey (USGS), there have been five earthquakes of magnitudes greater than 7 in northern Venezuela or near the coast since 1900 – the other earthquake that struck Wednesday night came in at 7.2 magnitude. An estimated 7.9m people in Venezuela were in need of humanitarian assistance before the earthquakes, meaning that their living conditions have likely been made even worse in the aftermath of the destruction, Oxfam said Thursday.