Aunt of Venezuelan boy pulled from rubble tells BBC she will give him ‘mother’s warmth’

The aunt of a two-year-old boy who was rescued after six days under rubble in Venezuela has spoken to the BBC of her elation at being reunited with her nephew and her hopes that his parents might still be found.

Kleiber Moran was pulled from the rubble of his home in Venezuela’s northern La Guaira state by Jordanian rescuers early on Tuesday.

Venezuela’s interim President Delcy Rodríguez has described the rescue as a “source of hope for our people” as the death toll from two major earthquakes last Wednesday continues to rise.

The boy’s aunt, 23-year-old Andreína Sarmiento, told the BBC she would “take care of Kleiber with a mother’s warmth until my sister appears, which is what we long for”.

“I’m praying a lot to God to give me strength because he is only two years old and I am not a mother,” she said, sitting at Kleiber’s bedside and holding his hand in a hospital in the capital Caracas.

“It hurts me a lot because my sister always used to tell me that he is my son, and now it’s like she’s handing him over to me and saying ‘this is your son, he is your responsibility,'” she said.

When a friend phoned Andreína from La Guaira to tell her of Kleiber’s rescue she fell to the floor and screamed and wept, before heading to meet him.

She said rescuers from the UK had also tried to reach him before the Jordanian team’s efforts were successful.

When the two were reunited, Kleiber looked at Andreína and immediately said “she Auntie”.

Andreína said Kleiber was in a “state of shock, screaming and screaming” when he arrived at the hospital. But he slept through the night and by Wednesday “he had stabilised”.

She said that “today he’s giving me little kisses, he talks to me, he tells me where it hurts”.

As she spoke, Kleiber lay next to her, wrapped in a Spiderman blanket and surrounded by toys, pushing a small car around the bed. He was in a ward with other children who had also survived the earthquakes.

“He doesn’t even have a single fracture. Everything is very good. All he has are some scratches here on his arms and on his legs, but nothing more,” Andreína told the BBC with a broad smile.

But while she is elated at being reunited with her nephew, Andreína said “it hurts because I can’t find my sister”.

She said she and 31-year-old Ana Luz were extremely close and would talk every day on video calls. Her sister always had Kleiber by her side.

“Wherever she went, her son went too. Whatever Kleiber wanted, she would please him. If she didn’t have money, she would call me: ‘Kleiber wants this’ or ‘he’s missing this,'” Andreína said.

“She is my older sister and I always trusted her and could tell her my problems and whenever I spoke to her on a video call, the child was by her side.”

Andreína said she was certain that her sister would have been next to Kleiber in the rubble.

As she sat with her nephew in hospital, desperate search and rescue efforts were continuing after the earthquakes.

Some 2,295 deaths have been officially recorded, but the final toll is expected to be many times higher. Tens of thousands have been reported missing, and the United Nations has said it is procuring 10,000 body bags for the country.

Andreína said she had not lost hope that Kleiber’s parents would be rescued.

“Just as they found my nephew, I have faith that they are going to find my sister and my brother-in-law,” she said.

Looking affectionately at Kleiber, she said she believed “he has a purpose in the world”.

“When this child grows up, God willing, this will be his story,” she said.

Additional reporting by Euridice Ledezma