"As we make efforts to find those missing, we must also place importance on water pollution after the dam burst and safeguard the drinking water supplies of people downstream," the Central Broadcast Station quoted Hu as saying.

Hu was speaking after the dam at a gold mine near Miliang township in Shaanxi province burst on Sunday, triggering landslides and sending waters laced with potassium cyanide into the Huashui river, the report said.

Waters and other waste from a holding pond behind the dam triggered the landslides in the impoverished mountain region that destroyed 20 homes, it said.

The provincial government has ordered residents living on the two banks of the river not to drink the water, while five towns below the spill have been ordered to monitor water quality, it said, without saying how many people may be affected.

Local mine officials in Miliang told AFP that efforts to find the missing people began only on Thursday as efforts over the previous three days had been focused on containing the pollution.

But a local government official played down the threat to residents' water supplies when contacted by AFP.

"I don't think it will affect the drinking water because all the towns and villages in that area get their drinking water from mountain springs or wells," a Zhenan county official surnamed Wang said by phone.

Including the gold mine accident, China has witnessed three mining mishaps since Saturday that have left at least 63 people dead or missing.

The accidents have come during China's seven-day Labor Day holiday and prompted a renewed call from Premier Wen Jiabao to step up safety in the nation's mines.

A gas explosion in a privately run coal mine in Shaanxi province took the lives of 32 miners on Saturday. Fourteen workers were killed in another blast Tuesday in an illegal coal mine in southwestern China's Guizhou province.

"We have to earnestly learn from these kinds of disasters," the Central Broadcasting Station quoted Wen as saying.

"The key problem is in administration, these kinds of hidden disasters could be lurking in other areas, so we must raise our level of alert.

"We need to eliminate these disasters before they happen."

A total of 5,986 workers died in China's coal mines last year, according to official figures, while another 2,235 were killed in ore mining accidents.

Labor rights groups, such as the Hong Kong-based China Labour Bulletin, say the real number of mining deaths could be as high as 20,000 each year.

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