In scenes captured on video and posted online, firemen desperately sawed away at the four-inch-wide pipe just below a ceiling in which the boy was trapped. The rescuers then rushed the section of pipe to a hospital, where firemen and doctors alternately used pliers and saws to take it apart. 

It began when perplexed neighbours heard screams coming from a waste pipe on the fourth floor of a run-down block of flats.

It ended with the astonishing sight of a two-day-old, 5lb boy being cut free after apparently being flushed down a lavatory by his mother.

He has been temporarily named Baby 59 – the number of the incubator in which he lies with a fractured skull and severe bruising.

In scenes captured on video and posted online, firemen desperately sawed away at the four-inch-wide pipe just below a ceiling in which the boy was trapped.

The rescuers then rushed the section of pipe to a hospital, where firemen and doctors alternately used pliers and saws to take it apart.

The infant’s arms were pinned to his side and when the pipe was pried away, he let out a long wail at the Pujiang County People’s Hospital in Jinhua, eastern China. He was still attached to the placenta.

Baby 59’s condition was said to be stable and he should recover. But the incident has succeeded in outraging a country in which brutal acts against youngsters are a common occurrence.

Hundreds of thousands of Chinese people took to Weibo – their version of Twitter –  to vent their fury at the mother, believed to be an unmarried 22-year-old.

News of the rescue also prompted an outpouring of help from locals who came to the hospital armed with nappies, baby clothes, powdered milk and even offers to adopt the child.

Nurse Zhang Songhe told the Daily Mail that the mother of the baby was with him in hospital. ‘I don’t know the reason she abandoned the baby.

‘We’re going to take care of the baby. We are not sure when the baby can be discharged.’

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