Seventeen people were still missing and unlikely to survive after a large amount of gold ore tailings engulfed their houses on April 30 in northwest China's Shaanxi Province, local rescuers said on Friday.

The accident happened at about 6:40 PM Sunday when a dam containing drosses of processed gold ores collapsed in a gold mine in Zhen'an County of Shangluo City.

The missing people were possibly buried under ore tailings and the remainder of the dam is rickety hindering rescue work, the rescuers said.

The landslide rushed down the dam and buried about 40 rooms of nine households, leaving 17 residents missing and injuring five others.

The accident took place when the dam is undergoing the sixth heightening project to increase its capacity.

The dam, belonging to the county-level Gold Mining Co. Ltd., with an original capacity of 1 million cubic meters, had been heightened for five times since the company was established in 1993 with a daily processing capacity of 300 tons of gold ores.

More than 130 local residents have been evacuated from the site of the accident and resettled elsewhere.

The local government has taken emergent measures to prevent the poisonous content in the tailings, including sodium cyanide, from polluting the environment.

Investigation into the cause of the accident is underway.

(Xinhua News Agency May 6, 2006)