Deadly Bird Flu Strain Found In Turkey

A teenage sister and brother who died of bird flu in Turkey this week were infected with the H5N1 strain of the virus, making it the first time that strain has killed humans outside East Asia, the U.N. health agency said Saturday.

The World Health Organization also said it was sending specialists to Turkey to determine whether the virus was transmitted from person to person.

"The laboratory in the U.K. said that they have detected H5N1 in samples from the two fatal cases," WHO spokeswoman Maria Cheng told The Associated Press.

Cheng said the spread of the disease from East Asia, where it has killed more than 70 people, was "a concern," but the global risk assessment of a human pandemic was unchanged.

The laboratory reported the results Saturday on the tests from a 15-year-old girl and her 14-year-old brother who died earlier in the week, Cheng said. They have yet to complete testing on the samples from their 11-year-old sister, who died of suspected bird flu Friday.

"Right now these new cases in Turkey, they don't elevate the global risk assessment, so we're still in the same pandemic alert phase that we've been in for the last couple of years," Cheng said. "But it's something that needs to be monitored very closely."

Cheng said WHO specialists are hoping to reach the infected part of eastern Turkey on Sunday to investigate whether the victims were infected by animals or by other humans.