Pictures of earthquake clear-up | British survivors tales

A powerful aftershock struck the devastated Chinese province of Sichuan today as authorities admitted that almost 5 million people had been left homeless by Monday’s earthquake.

The ferocity of the initial quake left as many as 50,000 dead and the latest tremor came as the Chinese military began the grim task of digging mass graves into the Sichuan hillsides.

Anonymous burial sites were the only remaining option as the massive rescue mission morphed into a grisly clean-up operation.

“The authorities asked us to bury the bodies quickly because they have been dead for several days. There is no time to waste. It's already been quite a long time and now the weather is starting to get warmer,” on official told The Times at the site of a mass grave in Libing.

The 50-metre-long trenches were being dusted with lime by young soldiers masked against the stench, but officers admitted they had no idea how many bodies were waiting to be buried.

Measuring 5.9 on the Richter scale, today's earthquake hit Lixian, in Sichuan province, west of the original epicentre in Wenchuan. Recently cleared roads were cut off once again, and newly repaired phone connections were destroyed.

Four days later, today's aftershock added another hazard: landslides.

The Chinese state news agency, Xinhua, said it was not clear how many people had been killed or injured in the latest tremor.

“[It] lasted about ten seconds and reporters saw rocks sliding from nearby mountains," the agency reported. "A number of vehicles were buried in landslides. The casualties were not known."

The aftershock came just hours after Hu Jintao, the Chinese President, arrived in the quake zone to reinvigorate a rescue operation in which miracles are becoming fewer and farther between. The official death toll has risen to 22,069 with some predictions that the final figure could be more than 50,000.

Arriving in Mianyang, one of the worst-hit cities in Sichuan province, Mr Hu said: “The challenge is still daunting, the task is still arduous and the time pressing.”

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