MIANYANG, CHINA — A powerful aftershock hit China on Sunday, killing at least six people and heightening fears of landslides and flooding, even as more survivors of the May 12 earthquake sought to trek back to their mountain villages.
The afternoon aftershock centered in northern Sichuan province was the strongest of thousands since the initial magnitude 7.9 temblor, and damaged about 270,000 houses, the official New China News Agency said. The U.S. Geological Survey measured the aftershock at 6.
It was centered in Qingchuan County, about 95 miles northeast of the initial quake's epicenter in Wenchuan, but it was felt across the region and even 800 miles away in Beijing, where people said office buildings swayed.
In Sichuan province, two people were confirmed dead and dozens of others were seriously injured, the news agency said. It reported today that the aftershock killed four people and seriously injured 20 others in neighboring Shaanxi province.
Earlier in the day, the Chinese government raised the death toll from the earthquake, the nation's worst disaster in 30 years, to 62,664, with an additional 23,775 people missing.
Chinese television reported Sunday that an 80-year-old man in Mianzhu had been pulled alive from the rubble Friday. Xiao Zhihu had been trapped under a collapsed pillar of his house and survived after being fed by his wife, the report said.
In Mianyang, south of Qingchuan, the aftershock caused panic in the streets, where many people have been sleeping in tents since May 12, as in other places throughout the area.
"Everyone was running out of buildings," said Zhang Linlei, 25, who was a few steps from the door of his apartment when the four-story complex shook and the windows above him rattled. "It's quite scary. I will never go back to that place again," he said of his home.
Chinese geologists have been concerned that aftershocks or heavy rains could cause the bursting of dams or overflow of so-called barrier lakes formed by the quake, which could then inundate villages.
About 90 minutes after the aftershock, scores of Chinese soldiers were mobilized at a highway toll plaza just outside the town of Beichuan, one of the areas hit hardest by the May 12 quake and under threat by a blocked river. The soldiers unloaded boxes of explosives.
A military leader at the scene would say only that the materials were for "important engineering purposes."
