A three-year-old girl has been pulled alive from the rubble about 100 hours after a powerful earthquake struck Colombia, Al Jazeera reported. A 75-year-old man was also found alive in a separate rescue operation - more than four days after the disaster.
The two rescue operations have given new hope to relatives of the missing, although rescue teams warn that the likelihood of finding more survivors is decreasing with each passing hour.
The 7.4-magnitude earthquake struck western Colombia on August 10, causing severe damage in Cali, Pereira and several towns in the Choco department. The epicenter was in the San José del Palmar area.
The girl was trapped under a collapsed building for more than four days. Footage from the rescue operation shows the moment the child was pulled from the rubble and handed over to medical teams.
The fact that he was found alive after about 100 hours is particularly significant, as rescue operations are now entering a phase in which the chances of finding survivors usually decrease sharply.
At the same time, rescuers managed to pull out a 75-year-old man alive, who had also spent several days under the rubble.
As of August 15, the number of confirmed victims of the earthquake had reached about 290 people, with approximately 140 still missing. Nearly 4,000 people were injured.
The hardest hit were Cali and Pereira, where a significant portion of the deaths were recorded. Thousands of people have been left homeless and are staying in temporary shelters or sleeping outdoors.
More than 10,000 homes have been destroyed or seriously damaged, affecting tens of thousands of families.
The teams are using dogs, specialized equipment and vibration and sound sensors to find people under the concrete rubble. In some places, rescuers are periodically demanding complete silence so they can hear voices or knocks from buried people.
The work is being hampered by unstable collapsed structures and hundreds of aftershocks. Reuters reports more than 269 aftershocks, posing additional risks to both survivors and rescue teams.
Just days earlier, a 32-year-old woman was also rescued after spending about 36 hours under the rubble in Pereira.