Cyprus Offered Assistance to Venezuela After Devastating Earthquakes

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Cyprus announced on June 25 that it is ready to provide humanitarian assistance to Venezuela, which was hit by two devastating earthquakes. Nicosia expressed deep condolences over the scale of the destruction and the loss of life, saying it is closely monitoring the situation and will join pan-European support mechanisms as soon as a coordinated international response to the disaster is formed. A number of regional states, including Colombia, Brazil, Chile and Ecuador, have also offered assistance to the Latin American country.

The disaster struck on the evening of June 24 on Venezuela's northern Caribbean coast near the city of Moron, about 160 kilometers from Caracas. Two powerful tremors of magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 were recorded less than a minute apart, becoming the strongest in the country in the last century. According to acting President Delcy Rodriguez, the death toll has already reached at least 164, around a thousand people have been injured, and people are still trapped under the rubble. The epicenter of the disaster was in La Guaira state, where more than 100 buildings were destroyed and the main international airport named after Simon Bolivar was completely blocked. To deal with the consequences, the Venezuelan authorities are urgently creating a $200 million infrastructure recovery fund.

The seismic issue is traditionally sensitive for Cyprus itself, which is located at the junction of the African and Eurasian tectonic plates. The island's seismic record shows regular tremors: the most destructive in modern history is considered to be the 1953 earthquake in Paphos, which caused casualties, while the most powerful in the century-long period was a magnitude 6.8 tremor in the same region on October 9, 1996. Among recent events, the magnitude 6.1 earthquake in January 2022 stands out; it affected the entire territory of Cyprus but caused no serious damage.