Market and product

* Nickel, copper hit multi-year lows

* U.S. crude slides more than 2 pct, gold down nearly 1 pct

* Dollar hits 7-month high vs euro

MANILA, Copper and nickel tumbled to multi-year lows and oil extended losses on Monday as commodities bore the brunt of another selloff, reflecting growing worries over China's economic fate and a strengthening dollar.

The selloff mostly focused on base metals as London nickel slid nearly 6 percent to its lowest since 2003 and copper fell almost 3 percent to its cheapest in more than six years.

Oil was not spared, with U.S. crude sliding as much as 2.2 percent, while gold came close to a near 6-1/2-year trough as a looming U.S. interest rate hike and a resultant firm dollar continued to blunt the bullion's safe-haven appeal.

Persistent fears that China, a top consumer of many commodities from copper to iron ore and rubber, "might stumble a bit more" are feeding the selling frenzy, said Vishnu Varathan, senior economist at Mizuho Bank in Singapore.

"So the entire confluence suggests that commodities are probably going to be about the worst hit in the asset space," said Varathan.

On the London Metal Exchange, three-month copper hit a low $4,461.50 a tonne before recovering slightly to $4,469 by 0420 GMT, off 2.4 percent from the previous session.

LME nickel fell as far as $8,235 a tonne and was down 4.6 percent at $8,330, while zinc slid 3 percent to $1,511.50 a tonne, having dropped below $1,500 last week for the first time since 2009.

The losses in nickel and zinc mirror the weakness in China's vast steel sector. China's apparent consumption of crude steel continued to shrink this year after falling in 2014 for the first time in more than a decade as a slowing economy hit industrial demand.

The fall in zinc prices came despite major Chinese zinc smelters saying they will slash output by 500,000 tonnes next year, almost a fifth of their output.

Shanghai rebar steel futures dropped to a record low on Monday.

Low profitability has cut the utilisation rate among Chinese steel mills and that will "worsen oversupply of iron ore", said Helen Lau, analyst at Argonaut Securities in Hong Kong.

In Tangshan in China's top steel producing Hebei province, utilisation rate stood at 81 percent, a six-year low, said Lau.

Also hit by selloff, U.S. crude dropped to below $41 a barrel, while Brent fell as much as 1.4 percent to just above $44 as oversupply worries persisted.

Spot gold slipped nearly 1 percent to a session low of $1,067.85, not far above last week's $1,064.95, its weakest since February 2010.

With Chinese credit not picking up "it's quite difficult to convince people that on the ground demand will pick up", said Varathan, also citing weak trade statistics.