Death Toll in Venezuela Flooding Climbs to 202

More heavy rain lashed Venezuela on Friday as the death toll from floods and mudslides rose to 202.

Foreign Minister Jose Vicente Rangel said about 7,000 people had been missing early Friday, but 300 to 400 had been located by evening. The death toll was likely to rise significantly.

The number of people left homeless was 80,000, President Hugo Chavez said in a speech Friday night.

The latest official figures show that the devastation wreaked by several days of torrential rain in Venezuela is far worse than previously thought.

Chavez said he was dispatching 1,000 soldiers belonging to elite paratrooper brigades to rescue and tend to stranded flood victims on Venezuela’s northern coast.

He said that 25 countries had offered relief aid and that three Black Hawk helicopters had arrived Friday from the United States. Cuba, he said, was sending a medical team today.

On Friday, rescuers searched for survivors and began clearing debris and recovering the dead.

Heavy rain was expected to last several more days.

Mayhem broke out in La Guaira, seven miles north of the capital, Caracas. Hundreds of flood survivors broke through barricades in the port city and scrambled to get their hands on food and water in containers that had been broken open by the force of raging water.