SHANGHAI, Sept 13 (Reuters) - Chinese authorities said on Saturday that they believed 432 babies across the country had been sickened by contaminated milk powder.

The government has ordered Sanlu Group, a dairy producer partly owned by New Zealand dairy giant Fonterra Co-operative Group, to halt production after a preliminary investigation found its products were responsible, officials said.

"This is a severe food safety accident," Gao Qiang, a senior official at the Ministry of Health, told a news conference.

Sanlu, based in the province of Hebei, admitted this week that its baby formula had been contaminated with melamine, a toxin linked to the deaths and illness of thousands of pets in the United States last year. (Reporting by Andrew Torchia, editing by Roger Crabb)

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