Firefighters have rescued a newborn boy from a sewer pipe below a squat toilet, sawing out an L-shaped section and then delicately dismantling it to free the cocooned baby, who greeted the rescuers with cries.

Firefighters and doctors rescue a newborn baby by cutting away a sewage pipe piece by piece, in this still image taken from video, in Jinhua city, Zhejiang province May 25, 2013. [Photo/Weibo.com]

A tenant heard the baby's sounds in the public restroom of a residential building in Zhejiang province in eastern China on Saturday and notified authorities, according to the state-run news site Zhejiang News.

The baby was subsequently taken to hospital for treatment.

Video footage of the rescue was broadcast nationally overnight.

Zhejiang News says the child, named Baby No. 59 from the number of his incubator, is safe.

Police are treating the case as an attempted homicide, and are looking for the mother and anyone else involved.

Despites the offers to adopt Baby No. 59, a doctor at the hospital said the boy would be handed over to social services if his parents do not show up to claim him, Zhejiang News said.

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