A three-year-old Indonesian boy whose sister died from bird flu last week has also died from the disease as the country grapples with a steady climb in cases, authorities said today.

IRAQ was yesterday investigating if a 14-year-old girl who died of a fever had contracted the human strain of the bird flu virus, while Turkey and China also reported new deaths from the deadly disease.

Turkish doctors today scrambled to save the life of a five-year-old boy, one of 21 people infected with the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu, as laboratories tested samples from dozens more patients across Turkey to detect the virus.