The industrial city of Wuhan, which has already been badly hit by serious flooding, expected a new peak flood tide to hit on Friday.

Water levels at high dikes protecting the city's seven million people dropped by one centimetre overnight to a still-critical 29.10 metres (96 feet) above the river bed.

The Yangtze's fourth flood peak whipped up by pounding rains earlier this week upriver in Sichuan province hit the site of the massive Three Gorges Dam early on Thursday.

More than two million people have been taking part in frantic efforts in recent days to shore up battered flood defences and hundreds of thousands of people have been evacuated.

A string of reports has emerged of burst dikes but the authorities have continued to conceal the true extend of casualties. The first major media conference on the disaster was planned forlater Thursday in Beijing.Before the latest bout of flooding, the worst in four decades, hit the Yangtze area, around 1,200 people had been killed since the start of May, according to official figures.

Reliable figures on the damage and death toll from the floods have been difficult to compile, as most local officials prefer to highlight relief efforts rather than damage.

Media reports in Hong Kong on Thursday said a dike was breached in the towns of Jiangzhou and Jingzhou in Jiangxi province on Tuesday, killing at least four people and leaving 60,000 people homeless.

Around 10,000 hectares (24,700 acres) were submerged in the accident, reports, quoting local officials said. On Wednesday reports said major dikes had given way in Hubei province in the cities of Jiujiang and Ruichang cities. In each case, officials on the scene denied any loss of life.But state media admitted on Thursday that an unknown number died from a giant dike burst last weekend in Hubei's Jiayu prefecture, which officials hadinsisted killed only one soldier.

Quoting officials speaking on condition of anonymity, the official China Daily said authorities ``were trying to determine the number of casualties'' and that 19 soldiers swept away in the disaster were still missing.

Dissident sources estimated hundreds were killed in the sudden dike burst.