Taipei, Feb. 8 (CNA) Two people trapped for more than 60 hours in an apartment building toppled by a magnitude 6.4 earthquake on Saturday were rescued Monday afternoon.

First it was an 8-year-old girl who was pulled from the collapsed building in Tainan at around 5 p.m., 61 hours after the earthquake struck southern Taiwan, rescuers said.

"Uncle, I am very thirsty," the girl told the rescuers as they pulled her out of the fallen 16-story apartment building. The girl was conscious as she was rescued and was rushed to the hospital for treatment.

About an hour later, rescuers dug through the debris of the same building in Tainan's Yongkang District to save a Vietnamese woman, in her late 20s, who was also conscious when she was rescued.

As of Monday afternoon, 38 people were confirmed dead from Saturday's earthquake, most of them residents of the collapsed 16-story apartment building, and the death toll is expected to rise because around 120 people still remain unaccounted for.

More than 500 people were injured in the quake that was centered in the Meinong District of Kaohsiung, which borders Tainan.

(By Yang Sz-ruei & Bear Lee; click here for the full coverage of the earthquke aftermath.)
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