A British laboratory has confirmed that three children from the same family in eastern Turkey have died of bird flu.
The third child, who died today, has been named as Hulya Kocyigit, 11, the sister of Mehmet Ali, a 14-year-old boy who died last weekend, and of Fatma, 15, a girl who died on Thursday.
And doctors said more than 20 other people, mostly children, were also being treated for suspected bird flu in the hospital where the children died.
The children lived in a remote rural district of eastern Turkey near the Armenian and Iranian borders, in close proximity with poultry - just like the east Asian victims. Neighbouring Azerbaijan was also going to run tests on suspect dead birds.
Their six-year-old brother was also being treated for the same disease in the hospital. But their parents were in good health as they received visitors come to pay condolences at their tiny one-room cottage in the town of Dogubayazit.
"There is no doctor here, we are very poor," Ibrahim Kocyigit, a relative, told Reuters in a tent set up near the house to accommodate the flood of visitors.
The deadly H5N1 bird flu virus remains hard for people to catch but there are fears it could mutate into a form easily transmitted among humans. Experts say a pandemic among humans could kill millions and cause massive economic losses.
The World Health Organisation, which had been expecting human cases after the virus was first detected among wild birds and poultry in Turkey and the Balkans late last year, said the latest cases did not mean a worldwide flu pandemic had become more likely.