Cheering Chinese soldiers pulled a survivor from the wreckage of a fertiliser plant today, 100 hours after the massive Sichuan earthquake.

Lin Deyun is a 50-year-old driver who should not even have been in the Yinfeng Fertiliser Plant when the earthquake struck on Monday afternoon: he had been due just to make a quick delivery. But when the building crumpled under the force of an earthquake that has now killed at least 20,000, he was in the games room.

His incredible rescue, the conclusion of which was witnessed by The Times, began when a team picking through the ruins yesterday heard sounds of life. To their amazement, they were able to speak to the trapped driver.

Lacking the equipment to dig down through the rubble, they called in a specialist team from the People's Liberation Army. They also telephoned his daughter and wife, and asked them to come to the site to keep up his spirits.

His daughter, Lin Yuan, told The Times: "I talked to my father yesterday. I called out: 'Daddy' and he said: 'I want water'. I was crying. He said he could not move at all."

It eventually took the rescue team 22 hours to free him. His body was pinned down by such heavy concrete that doctors had to amputate a part of one of his arms and one of his legs.

A military medic, Zhao Hongxiu, said: "We discussed with him that we would have to operate. He agreed that the most important thing was to save his life."