Mexico is reeling from the aftermath of the 7.1 magnitude earthquake that hit the country on Tuesday. Civil servants and volunteers teamed up on rescue efforts, digging through debris at a collapsed primary and secondary school in southern Mexico City on a search for survivors and missing loved ones. 

                               Photo: AP/Carlos Cisneros

“We can hear small noises, but we don’t know if they’re coming from above or below, from the walls above (crumbling), or someone below calling for help,” said volunteer rescue worker Dr. Pedro Serrano in an interview with the Associated Press. Journalists witnessed rescuers pulling at least two small bodies from the rubble at the Escuela Enrique Rebsamen school.

                            Photo: Pablo Ramos

After risking his life crawling through the schools unstable ruins, Dr. Serrano made his way to a classroom to find all of its occupants dead. “We saw some chairs and wooden tables. The next thing we saw was a leg, and then we started to move rubble and we found a girl and two adults — a woman and a man,” he said.

The federal Education Department reported on Tuesday that 25 bodies had been recovered from the school’s wreckage – all but four of them children. Thirty children and eight adults are still missing. Two families reportedly received WhatsApp messages from girls trapped inside, but that could not be confirmed as a crowd of anxious parents awaited outside the school's gates.

                       Photo: Gustavo Martinez Contreras