ARBIL, Iraq, 7 February 2006 — Doctors were treating six patients from the same part of northern Iraq for suspected bird flu yesterday as international experts began to help the war-ravaged country fight the virus. The World Health Organization team arrived in the country at the weekend, after laboratory tests last week confirmed that an Iraqi teenage girl who died last month had H5N1 avian influenza, raising fears that the virus had spread from neighboring Turkey. Iraqi medical officials, already overwhelmed by victims of bombings and shootings, would be stretched to combat bird flu if it spreads beyond an area in the north near Sulaimaniya.

A second Iraqi Kurd was confirmed yesterday to have died from the deadly H5N1 bird flu strain as international teams arrived to combat the spread of the virus in the country’s north. Hamma Sur Abdallah, 40, who died of flu-like symptoms a little over a week after his niece passed away under similar circumstances, was confirmed as having died of virus by a lab in Cairo, a senior Kurdish health official told AFP.

In Baghdad, Iraq’s Health Minister Abdul-Mutalib Mohammad said dealing with any outbreak of bird flu would be a challenge. “We can’t provide any guarantees we can control the disease,” he told Reuters. “I’m not quite satisfied with people’s responses when we ask them to burn their poultry in infected areas.” The girl’s uncle also died and a WHO laboratory in London is testing samples to see if bird flu killed him. Tests are also being carried out on samples from a 54-year-old woman with respiratory problems who is being treated in northern Iraq.

There are five other people whose clinical condition gives grounds for suspecting that they could have the disease, although they have not been seen by the WHO team on the ground in northern Iraq, WHO spokesman Dick Thompson said. Bird flu has killed more than 80 people around the world since it reemerged in late 2003. There are fears the virus could mutate into a form that passes easily from person to person, sparking a pandemic in which millions could die. Iraqi medical officials stress the virus has not spread.

The High Committee to Fight Bird Flu in the Council of Ministers said yesterday that the epidemic is still confined to Serkikan village, Raniya district in Sulaimaniya Province, on the Iranian-Turkey borders. Bird flu killed four children in Turkey last month, but the outbreak there has been brought under control. There are fears that insurgent violence in Iraq and a ruined infrastructure will make it much harder to control the virus.

Fears of a major bird flu outbreak are adding to the woes of ordinary people in Iraq. “The government must close the poultry factory near Sulaimaniya,” said Khalid Mustafa, 34, a theater actor. “We are afraid the problem is huge. We have a weak government which cannot face crises much less dangerous than bird flu.”

WHO country representative Naeema Al-Gasseer told a media briefing in Arbil, the capital of Iraq’s largely autonomous Kurdistan region, that local health officials were confident the virus had not spread from the dead girl’s village, Serkikan.

Earlier yesterday, the WHO said there were seven more suspected cases of bird flu in Iraqi Kurdistan. “Apart from the girl who died there are seven suspected cases of bird flu and we have taken their blood samples and sent them to Cairo for further investigation,” Al-Gasseer, told reporters before news of Abdallah’s death emerged. Further tests are under way in Britain on virus samples from Abdallah, as well as on samples from a woman who comes from the same region and remains in hospital.

Meanwhile, a large consignment of masks, gloves and gowns is on its way from the United States to help the war-torn country fight a deadly outbreak. “What Iraq needs is lots of personal protection equipment such as masks, gloves, gowns and disinfectants to curb the spread of the disease,” said Jon C. Bowersox, health attache with the US Embassy.

Kurdistan’s Health Minister Mohammed Kashnow had said on Sunday that four suspected cases were being treated in a hospital in Sulaimaniya. Jamal Abdul Hamid, the health minister in Arbil, said that any suspected bird flu victim would be treated immediately before any test material arrives from abroad. The WHO team will visit hospitals and homes of suspected bird flu victims during a 10-day trip in Iraq.

Iraq has reported an outbreak of bird flu in poultry in two villages in the Raniya district, the World Animal Health Organization (OIE) said yesterday.