BEIJING -- At least 41 people died and hundreds were hospitalized with food poisoning on Saturday after eating breakfast snacks in the eastern Chinese city of Nanjing, state media said.

The official Xinhua news agency reported on its web site that 41 people died after eating sesame cakes, fried dough sticks and fried glutinous rice balls.

It quoted doctors as saying the death toll was expected to rise.

More than 400 people -- many of them construction workers and middle school students -- had been rushed to local hospitals after eating at an outlet of the heshengyuan soy milk chain in nanjing's jiangning district, xinhua said.

"They know it's food poisoning but they're not sure of the exact reason," he said.

Many city officials, local reporters and hospitals treating the victims said they were not allowed to comment on the incident, Reuters reported.

A nurse at Gulou Hospital, one of the city's largest medical centers, said they had treated a large number of food poisoning victims during the day.

"But by the time we got on duty, they had all been discharged," she said.

Ten hospitals around Nanjing were treating the victims, the web site of the communist party-run People's daily said.

It said a number of high-level local officials had rushed to the scene on the orders of provincial chiefs.

The food poisoning outbreak appeared to be the biggest in recent memory in China, where deaths have occurred in restaurants using cheaper industrial salts rather than salt available in supermarkets.