In this photograph taken with a mobile phone, a woman lies injured atop a taxi where she fell from the 23rd floor of the Hotel Panamericano in Buenos Aires, January 24, 2011. REUTERS/Denisse Pato Beratis

BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - An Argentine woman survived after jumping from the 23rd floor of a downtown Buenos Aires hotel on Monday, landing on a taxi moments after the driver dashed to safety, the state news agency reported.

The 33-year-old woman was in the intensive care ward of a Buenos Aires hospital after the suicide attempt, the Telam agency said.

Taxi driver Miguel Cajal said he got out of his parked taxi and ran for safety when he saw a policeman looking up at the woman, who was on an upper floor of the Panamericano hotel.

“If I hadn’t got out, I’d be dead,” Cajal, 39, told local television, which showed pictures of his mangled vehicle, its windshield and roof crushed by the impact of the woman’s fall.