In a drama played out on live television, a mother and her two toddlers were found trapped in their car under tons of rock and mud today nearly four days after a deadly earthquake hit northern Japan.
National broadcaster NHK said all were alive when found, but as darkness fell and rescue efforts went on, Kyodo news agency said the mother's pulse could no longer be detected.
Orange-clad rescue workers toiled for hours to shift huge boulders that had crashed onto the family's white van to rescue two-year-old Yuta Minagawa, passing him from hand to hand before airlifting him by helicopter to hospital.
Aftershocks jolted the area as workers held up spotlights and used shovels, crowbars and brute force to try to free the boy's three-year-old sister Mayu and their mother, Takako.
The family were on their way home from visiting friends when the quake struck on Saturday, killing at least 31 people and injuring more than 3,400 in the rural Niigata region, 150 miles north of Tokyo.
The 6.8 magnitude tremor was Japan's deadliest since a quake with a reading of 7.2 killed more than 6,400 in the western city of Kobe in 1995.
More than 100,000 survivors of Saturday's quake, many of them elderly, were still in makeshift shelters, enduring another day of stress and fatigue, raising fears the death toll could rise.
News of the rescue operation came just hours after another powerful tremor jolted the region.