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A team of international rescuers pulled a man alive from a collapsed building in Venezuela on Thursday, eight days after the country was rocked by twin 7.2- and 7.5-magnitude earthquakes.

Hernan Gil, 43, was working as a night watch guard at a seven-story building in Catia La Mar when part of it collapsed, trapping him in his security booth beneath the rubble.

"When we found him, he asked us not to tell his wife that he was alive, just in case he wouldn't make it," Costa Rican rescuer Minyar Collado told the Associated Press.

But, she added, "We were never going to leave him there."

Gil's wife, Gusbimar Gonzalez, was elated by the news on Thursday.

"I am completely surprised. It's the first time I've seen so many countries come together like this for a single cause, to save one person," she told AFP. "This is truly a miracle."

"He wasn't hurt, he has no trauma, he managed to hide under a table and a chair," she added.

Rescuers from Venezuela, Chile, the United States, Portugal, Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Mexico worked around the clock for three days in order to rescue him.

They used a telescopic camera to communicate with him, provided water via a hose, and inserted a tube through the rubble to supply oxygen.