Picture used for illustration.

A newborn baby abandoned in a waste chute in Kalamata, Greece was saved by a woman on Wednesday.

The woman who was feeding stray cats was able to rescue the days-old baby because the garbage truck ran late.

According to the woman that found the child, the baby was left meters deep in the chute.

"The baby was placed in a paper bag... it was dropped there to die," Vassiliki Tsoni told the Newsit website.

"The chute was half full. I was shouting, nobody was stopping to help," said Tsoni, adding that she had stayed to dissuade neighbours from dropping more rubbish down the chute.

"If I had left to call the police, more garbage would have covered the baby. I was there for half an hour. It was crying, I was crying... I'm no mother but it really hurts."

"The baby was fortunate in its misfortune... there was a delay in the day's collection," Kalamata mayor Thanassis Vassilopoulos told Alpha TV.

"The garbage trucks do not just load waste, they compress it."

The baby was taken to a local hospital with breathing difficulty, and is expected to make a full recovery, the station said.

According to Police, an arrest of a young woman has been made in connection to the incident.