The quake struck China's Sichuan Province on Saturday at 4:30 p.m. [8:30 a.m. GMT] with the epicenter about 50 km southeast of the city of Panzhihua, killing at least 44 people and destroying 258,000 homes.
Shortly afterwards, an aftershock measuring 5.6 on the Richter scale, the most powerful of the aftershocks to hit the area, struck the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, in the northwest of the country.
China has been hit by 21 quakes this year, and experts predict that more could occur in the new future.
The Sichuan province recently marked 100 days since it was hit by a massive earthquake measuring 8.0 on the Richter scale, the most powerful to hit the region in thirty years. At least 70,000 people were killed and 10 million displaced in the May 12 quake.
