Corso, Algeria ? A wide-eyed Algerian toddler was tenderly lifted from the ruins of her family’s home Friday, two days after a devastating earthquake killed more than 1,600 people — a tiny survivor found by rescuers who heard her plaintive cries.

Two-year-old Emilie Kaidi stayed alive beneath the shattered concrete of her collapsed ground-floor bedroom, sheltered by a door that fell across a television set.

A Spanish volunteer, wedged in a tiny hole in the rubble, handed the black-haired little girl up to other rescuers. She did not have any visible injuries.

“It warmed our hearts and gave us hope,” said Amirouche Istanbule, a 38-year-old house painter who witnessed the rescue.

Emilie’s parents also survived the Wednesday evening earthquake that destroyed their hometown, Corso, east of the capital Algiers.

However, her sister, 4-year-old Lisa, died in the ruins of the four-story building where the family lived, another witness said.

Emilie “was traumatized but intact,” said Amar Boutihe, 46, a project manager with a construction firm who lives across the street. “When she came out, everybody had smiles on their faces.”

But “the mood really changed an hour later when they brought out her sister,” who was dead, Boutihe said.

Despite the dramatic rescue, workers said they were losing hope for finding more people alive after the 6.8-magnitude quake that killed more than 1,600 people and injured 7,207. The death toll was expected to rise, the Interior Ministry said.

Emilie Kaidi, 2, emerges in the hands of a Spanish volunteer rescue worker from the flattened rubble of her home in Corso, east of Algiers, two days after a major earthquake struck the region, killing more than 1,600 and wounding thousands more. Emilie survived in her collapsed ground-floor bedroom, protected from the rubble by a door that fell on a television set, giving her shelter for almost two days. Emilie's constant cries for her mother led rescue workers to her.

Rescuers have stopped listening for voices, and instead were being guided by the scent of decaying bodies, said Saa Sayah, a captain in Algeria’s civil protection unit.

“There is not much hope here,” he said in front of a collapsed four-story building in Boumerdes. “We have already pulled up four bodies, but we can’t get further inside.”

Emilie’s cries, and precision work by rescuers, saved her.

Rescuers asked for total silence as they inserted an ultrasound device into the wreckage to precisely locate her. A half-hour later, Emilie was raised from the rubble.

“When they brought her out, she was covered in dust and a Spanish rescue worker immediately put his hand over her eyes to block out the light,” Istanbule, the painter, said.

Villagers suffering from rising shortages of food, drinkable water and electricity accused the government on Friday of a weak response. Heavy machinery needed to dig survivors and bodies from the rubble was nonexistent in many areas, townspeople said.

Some villagers said the lack of outside help inflated the death toll. Left to their own devices, townspeople struggled in vain to move huge slabs of cement with their bare hands or shovels, their dying loved ones just yards away.

“We have only our hands and hammers,” said Ismail Lizir, 42, also of Corso.

“Nobody has visited us, not even to establish a death count,” said Yoscef Manel, 34, who does odd jobs. “Helicopters flew overhead and the interior minister drove through, but it’s noise for nothing.”

However, Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia said in Algiers that heavy machinery could not be used as long as their was hope of finding survivors.

The prime minister announced $7,000 in aid for each victim and housing.

The government struggled to respond, moving dozens of ambulances, 3,000 police and security agents and electrical workers into the quake zone.