PESHAWAR, Oct 16: A seven-year-old boy was found alive on Sunday in the rubble of his home eight days after the massive earthquake flattened the Balakot town of Mansehra district, a witness in the area said.

Three other children, including a seven-month-old baby, were rescued by an army reserve team from the suburbs of Balakot who had lost their parents in the catastrophe.

The children had nobody to take care of them and were surviving on their own in the open, a reporter with a private television channel in Balakot said.

“They were not stuck in the rubble,” the reporter said, refuting reports that the three kids had been rescued from the rubble of their collapsed house.

“Somehow or the other, they managed to survive,” he said. “The kids braved aftershocks and the biting cold,” he said.

He said the children, two girls, five and four years old, and the baby were now safe in Balakot.

Rescue workers had lost all hopes of finding survivors but the recovery of the seven-year-old boy has rekindled hopes of finding people who may still be alive.