An Israeli rescue team from Magen, Ready for Rescue, and SmartAID started its fifth day assisting people in affected areas of Venezuela on Thursday after powerful earthquakes hit the nation earlier this week.

The group collaborates with local responders and receives directions to locations where officials have reports of individuals possibly trapped in collapsed structures from the recent quakes.

Search and recovery efforts proceed by hand amid challenging conditions after several days of nonstop work. The team has retrieved multiple bodies from debris and plans to keep going at any sites where local officials request support.

We go to every site where information is received about people who were inside buildings that collapsed, said Eran Magen, head of the rescue delegation.

This is manual, extended, and very intricate work done in tough field settings across days of ongoing effort. We keep working wherever assistance is needed, fully dedicated to the task, he added.

Large-scale destruction and continued Israeli team efforts

The quakes have claimed around 2,300 lives, injured thousands more, and displaced many others, according to Venezuelan lawmaker Jorge Rodriguez, while some 41,136 remain listed as missing.

There is no doubt we are facing a figure higher than what has already been reported. I can offer an estimate: we are procuring - and this has been agreed with local authorities - 10,000 body bags, Gianluca Rampolla, the United Nations resident coordinator in Venezuela, said on Monday from his Caracas office.

Some 59,000 buildings suffered damage or destruction from the quakes, which struck seconds apart at magnitudes of 7.2 and 7.5, based on an analysis by Oregon State University researchers using satellite images.

The delegation noted that its work will proceed based on operational details from local authorities.

Reuters contributed to this report.