Tokyo ? In a dramatic rescue shown on live TV, a 2-year-old boy was pulled out alive Wednesday after four days trapped inside his family’s minivan, buried by an earthquake-induced landslide.

The joy was muted, however, by news that rescuers were unable to save Yuta Minagawa’s mother, and the fate of his 3-year-old sister looked increasingly grim.

The family’s white van was swept away Saturday in a wave of boulders and earth that pulverized the hillside road they were on when the 6.8-magnitude quake ripped across rural Niigata prefecture.

The van was spotted Tuesday under hillside rubble, and television cameras tracked rescuers painstakingly digging through to a voice they heard inside.

Eventually, the toddler was shown being lifted out in the arms of an orange-clad rescue worker — covered in mud and looking weak, but conscious. He was airlifted by helicopter to a hospital.

“The area was crushed by a large rock, and Yuta just happened to find a one-meter (3-foot) opening and was standing up by himself,” said Mitsuo Kiyotsuka, one of the rescuers, smiling in wonder. “We’d been telling ourselves we’d get them out. But then he appeared and it was like, ‘Can this be true?”‘

Hours later, the body of his mother, Takako, 39, was pulled from the wreckage and airlifted to a hospital, where she was pronounced dead, raising the death toll from the quake to 32. Hospital officials said doctors believed she had died instantly from the impact.

A sister, Mayu, was still buried and her condition was uncertain. Rescuers temporarily halted their search amid aftershocks Wednesday but later resumed.

Officials at Nagaoka Red Cross Hospital said the boy was suffering from dehydration, hypothermia and a large gash on his head, but was in stable condition. NHK public broadcaster quoted the toddler telling his father he drank milk in the car and was asking for melons and water at the hospital.

Yuta Minagawa, 2, center, is carried by a rescuer during an operation to free a family of three, a mother and her two toddlers, from a white van in Nagaoka, Niigata Prefecture. Yuta survived four days buried after the family's minivan was buried in a landslide after the powerful earthquake that ravaged northern Japan during the weekend.

Yuta’s surprise rescue was greeted as a miracle amid the wreckage of the earthquake — the deadliest to hit Japan since 1995 when a 7.2-magnitude temblor killed 6,000 people in the western city of Kobe.

More than 440 aftershocks have been recorded since Saturday, including four of magnitude 6 or higher, although they were becoming less frequent.

Meanwhile, 100,000 residents remained in shelters amid fears the aftershocks could trigger more landslides. Thousands more were camped out in tents and cars, too afraid to return home.

With many roads still blocked by landslides and ruined roads, relief workers in helicopters and cars struggled to get emergency goods to isolated hamlets and overcrowded evacuation centers.