Venezuela's information ministry puts the earthquake death toll at 3,342

Venezuela's information ministry reported that the death toll from the earthquakes had risen to 3,342. The update came on July 5, after the June 24 doublet in Yaracuy. It replaced the lower confirmed counts published in the first days after the disaster.

Those earlier counts, from the previous week, had moved from an unknown casualty figure on the night of the quake to 188 dead and then to 920 dead, with large numbers injured and missing. The July 5 figure was the ministry's later total. It did not, in that notice, restate the missing-person count.

The quakes were a magnitude 7.2 foreshock and a magnitude 7.5 mainshock, with severe damage and collapses recorded in Caracas. That physical description did not change when the death toll was revised. What changed was the confirmed number of dead.

Other deadly accidents in the same days were not folded into the 3,342. A tuition-centre roof in Lahore killed at least 14 schoolchildren and put nine in hospital. Floods and landslides killed at least 24 people in Accra and Abidjan. A bus traveling from Quetta toward Islamabad plunged into a ditch in Sherani district and killed 40 people, injuring eight.

A jade mine collapse in Kachin State, Myanmar, killed five and left fifteen missing. Nine children were killed when a motorized tricycle fell into a canal in Abu Tig, Egypt. In Nigeria a truck and a bus collision killed ten and injured six, and a Mumbai building collapse in heavy rain killed six and injured one.

The Venezuelan toll is the one the information ministry stated, 3,342. Separate crashes and collapses have their own counts. They should not be added to the quake figure, and the quake figure should not be treated as still unknown.