CARACAS (Reuters):

A Venezuelan man, who had been declared dead, woke up in the morgue in excruciating pain after medical examiners began their autopsy.

Carlos Camejo, 33, was declared dead after a highway accident and taken to the morgue, where examiners began an autopsy only to realise something was amiss when he started bleeding. They quickly sought to stitch up the incision on his face.

Unbearable pain

"I woke up because the pain was unbearable," Camejo said, according to a report yesterday in leading local newspaper El Universal.

His grieving wife turned up at the morgue to identify her husband's body only to find him moved into a corridor - and alive.

Reuters could not immediately reach hospital officials to confirm the events. But Camejo showed the newspaper his facial scar and a document ordering the autopsy.