Venezuela's acting President Delcy Rodríguez on Thursday strongly defended her government's response to the twin earthquakes that have devastated parts of the oil-rich country.
"We did not wait one day, two days or three days. We activated immediately," Rodríguez told foreign journalists a week after the earthquakes struck.
"Naturally, at the sites where the building collapsed, the first people to arrive were survivors of the collapse itself, relatives and neighbors," she added.
Rodriguez's administration has been criticized for being slow and disorganized in its response to the disaster.
The NGO International Rescue Committee, for instance, said earlier this week the scale of the response was not meeting humanitarian needs.
