Powerful Aftershock Kills 8 In China

Nerves were on edge Monday in China's quake-devastated Sichuan province after a powerful aftershock Sunday destroyed tens of thousands of homes.

On Monday, China's cabinet saidthe death toll in the aftershock had risen to eight, including deaths in neighboring provinces. More than 480 others were injured.

The magnitude 6.0 aftershock was among the most powerful recorded since the initial May 12 quake, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The China National Seismic Network said the aftershock was the strongest of dozens in the nearly two weeks after the disaster.

Xinhua said 71,000 homes that survived the original quake were leveled, and another 200,000 were in danger of collapse from the aftershock that caused office towers to sway in Beijing, 800 miles away. Xinhua did not give any details on whether the houses were occupied or how it arrived at the figure.

Meanwhile, soldiers set to work Monday trying to unblock a debris-clogged river threatening to flood homeless survivors from the earthquake that ravaged the central province two weeks ago.

The 1,800 soldiers marched into the new Tangjiashan lake in Beichuan county, carrying 22 pounds of explosives each to blast through the debris, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

The soldiers arrived early Monday at the lake - formed by a massive landslide rocked loose by China's worst earthquake in three decades - "and immediately began work to defuse the danger of a major flooding," it said.

The lake is 2 miles upstream from the main center in Beichuan county.

CBS News reporter Celia Hatton says 20,000 people have already been evacuated from the area downstream from the lake, and if the heavy rain continues, that number could rise to 100,000.

Xinhua said the soldiers "planned to blast away the landslide barrier." It did not give any details.

State television showed pictures of a military helicopter flying a big earth mover into the area.

Hatton reports that many of the thousands being displaced for fear that Tangjiashan lake could inundate the area were people who had managed to stick out the original disaster in their villages. Their upheaval now will place a huge new burden on the government, which is already struggling to find shelter for thousands of others.

One person who lost his home to the Sunday aftershock was 36 year-old villager Yu Xiongjun, who was collecting food and water from a government distribution center in Qifo in northern Sichuan's Qingchuan county.

He and four other family members have been living in a tent in the mountains since the earthquake two weeks ago damaged their home. The aftershock destroyed the home.

"Now, no one can live on the mountain, it is impossible. All five of us were scared after the aftershock and stayed up all night," Yu said as he put a 55-pound bag of rice into a bamboo basket he had strapped to his back.

The Cabinet said Monday the confirmed death toll from the disaster had risen to 65,080, with more than 23,775 more people missing. The death toll was up about 2,500 from the previous day. Premier Wen Jiabao has already said the number of dead could surpass 80,000.

The government is also struggling to house the millions left homeless in the earthquake. It has made an international appeal for tents.

In Dujiangyan near the provincial capital of Chengdu, engineers were preparing a site Monday where prefabricated housing for 1,000 people will be put up.

The white buildings with blue metal roofs will provide 86 square feet of housing for one family.

"The most important thing is getting people into temporary housing and stabilizing the health and hygiene situation," said Zhang Haibo, a health inspector from Shandong province in eastern China.

A new tent camp is also being built in nearby Juyuan. A string of 120 tents will be set up in a field. The tent camp is across a river from the rubble of the Juyuan high school, where more than 270 students died.