DUJIANGYAN, China (AP) - A Chinese woman - eight months pregnant - was pulled to safety Wednesday after spending 50 hours trapped under earthquake rubble, setting off celebrations among beleaguered rescuers.

Rescue workers pulled the pregnant woman's elderly mother to safety minutes later in the same place in rare good news in Sichuan province, where the official death toll has risen to nearly 15,000 from Monday's massive quake. But up to four others remained trapped in the collapsed apartment building and the prospects for reaching them were slim, a rescuer said.

Safety officials could speak to the 34-year-old expectant mother, Zhang Xiaoyan, but had to proceed slowly in trying to dig her out for fear that the rubble above her would shift and collapse.

A watching crowd, most of them also made homeless by the quake, burst into applause and cheering as Zhang was lifted into the scoop of a front loader and slowly lowered to the ground. A medical team then rushed her into an ambulance that sped off through clogged traffic, as rescuers threw their arms in the air and cheered.

"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," Sun said as she watched Zhang being taken away in an ambulance.

But triumph was quickly followed by fresh desperation when rescuers departed the site after extricating Zhang and her mother. Relatives pleaded for them to stay and look for up to four others still trapped in the rubble, possibly alive. Sun insisted further probing would be too dangerous and a smaller crew stayed behind with dogs to check for signs of life.

"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," said Sun, who was on the scene for much of the 50-hour rescue operation involving some 35 firemen from three departments.

Zhang and her mother were trapped about 18 feet high in a pile of concrete slabs and other debris after their building collapsed.

Both looked shaken but not seriously injured when they were pulled out. They had been given water during the whole time and rescue workers were able to talk to them.

The rescue was not the only one Wednesday. In the Beichuan region further 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. It did not say if all had been trapped in collapsed buildings.