Second child dies from birdflu

ISTANBUL - A second Turkish child from the same family died from bird flu on Thursday, officials and doctors said, in the first human cases of the flu outside China and Southeast Asia.

"We lost Fatma Kocyigit this morning," Niyazi Tanilir, Governor in the eastern province of Van, said on the CNN Turk news channel. The 15-year-old girl died in hospital at around 6.30am (1730 NZT).

Her brother, 14-year-old Mehmet Ali Kocyigit, died at the weekend.

Turkish officials on Wednesday said that the cause of death was the H5N1 strain of bird flu.

A top World Health Organisation official said he could not yet confirm this but it was probably correct - which would mark a dramatic shift westwards for the deadly disease to the threshold of Europe.

Tanilir said one other patient from the family was in a particularly critical condition.

Turkish Health Minister Recep Akdag gave no specific details on the boy's death, in comments before the second fatality, but said samples had been sent to the WHO and Britain for more tests.

If the deaths are officially confirmed as being the result of H5N1, they would be the first outside eastern Asia where more than 70 people have been killed by the disease since 2003.

The virus remains hard for people to catch, but there are fears it could mutate into a form easily transmitted among humans.

Turkey, on the path of migratory birds that are believed to spread the virus, has had two outbreaks of the highly contagious disease among poultry in the past three months.

- REUTERS