In emergency centres in Caracas, survivors have stuck up photographs of their missing relatives, while television and radio stations are broadcasting messages to try to reunite families.

Most of those in the affected areas are joining the exodus to government shelters.

Others are refusing to leave their half-destroyed homes to the looters.

In one seaside town of Macuto where he smell of decomposing corpses was suffocating, 46-year-old Maritza de Mantos said: "This place is ripe for an epidemic. There are so many dead."

Attempting to stave off disease, the authorities continue to recover bodies for proper burial - but the numbers of those killed is overwhelming.

Officials in the capital Caracas are asking countries to donate coffins as well as aid.

One rescue worker, Alfredo Calles, said: "We dig where the stench is strongest."

Some corpses, half-buried in dried mud, are doused in lime to speed decomposition and stop disease spreading. They are marked with a plain wooden cross.

"There is no time to identify the dead," Mr Calles said