escue workers pulled a woman who was eight months pregnant to safety Wednesday after she spent 50 hours trapped under earthquake rubble.
A second woman was rescued minutes later in the same place in a bit of rare good news in Sichuan province, where the official death toll has risen to nearly 15,000 from Monday's massive quake.
Safety officials could speak to Zhang Xiaoyan but had to proceed slowly in trying to dig her out for fear that the rubble above her would shift and collapse on her.
''It is very moving. It's a miracle brought about by us all working together,'' said Sun Guoli, the fire chief of nearby Chengdu, the provincial capital.
''It's a miracle of life, using one's life to save a life,'' she said as she watched Zhang being taken away in an ambulance.
Sun was on the scene for the whole of the 50-hour rescue operation.
Zhang and the other woman were trapped about 18 feet up in a pile of concrete slabs and other debris after their building collapsed. There was no immediate word on the fate of the baby.
Both women looked shaken but not seriously injured when they were pulled out. They had been given water during the rescue.
''We were told by engineers that the building was very dangerous and highly unstable so the rescue operation was very risky. But it shows how much value we put on saving lives,'' Sun said.
The rescues were not the only ones Wednesday. In the Beichuan region farther north in Sichuan, a 3-year-old girl who was trapped for more than 40 hours under the bodies of her parents was pulled to safety, the official Xinhua New Agency said.
It said rescuers heard Song Xinyi on Tuesday morning, but were unable to pull her out right away due to fears the debris above her would collapse. She was fed and shielded from the rain until rescuers extricated her from the rubble.
Premier Wen Jiabao looked over her wounds, part of his highly publicized tour of the disaster area aimed at reassuring the public about the government's response to the quake.
Xinhua said that 84 people had been saved so far in Sichuan.
05/14/2008 07:14 AM
By CHRISTOPHER BODEEN Associated Press Writer
DUJIANGYAN, China
escue workers pulled a woman who was eight months pregnant to safety Wednesday after she spent 50 hours trapped under earthquake rubble.
