VENEZUELAN President Hugo Chavez took US President George W Bush to task in front of a global summit for waging war in Iraq without UN consent and won rousing applause for his critique.

VENEZUELAN investigators yesterday picked through the wreckage of a plane that crashed with 160 people on board, trying to determine what caused the engines to fail and sent the jet plunging from the sky in the country’s deadliest air disaster in history.

France’s foreign minister said today it could take time to identify the bodies of the passengers on the West Caribbean Airways plane that crashed in Venezuela, killing all 160 aboard.

Two powerful explosions injured four people and damaged the Spanish embassy and the Colombian consulate in the Venezuelan capital early today.

FORTY-SEVEN people were killed and 12 injured after a fire in a Caracas nightclub which had no emergency exits.