In the mountains of Venezuela’s La Guaira state, workers have excavated new trenches at a cemetery to bury hundreds of people killed in the powerful twin earthquakes nearly two weeks ago, even as many of the bodies being laid to rest remain unidentified.
CNN observed heavy machinery working at La Esperanza cemetery on Monday, while personnel wearing blue protective garments moved coffins into the ground and prepared additional graves for the bodies.
Satellite images from spatial intelligence company Vantor show more than 20 rows of freshly dug trenches, each one large enough to fit multiple caskets side by side.
A cemetery worker told CNN that the cemetery has dug around 500 new burial plots in response to the emergency and reserved an area with about 150 graves for unidentified victims.
Images from Reuters show some burial sites traced with small stones. Based on the size of the trenches and these outlines, hundreds of people could be buried there, according to CNN’s analysis of the photos.
