An earthquake with a magnitude of 5.6 yesterday damaged thousands of houses in Sichuan province, where an 8.0 magnitude quake in May 2008 left nearly 90,000 people dead or missing and 5 million homeless.

The quake, which experts say was an aftershock of last year's catastrophe, occurred at 2:03 am in Mianzhu and destroyed 8,600 houses, 60 bridges and about 30 km of fiber-optic cables, according to the Xinhua News Agency.

Another aftershock, measuring about 5.0 magnitude, occurred at 3:24 pm yesterday, the provincial earthquake administration reported.