At least five more Turks, including two small boys and an adult hospitalized in Ankara, tested positive for H5N1 bird flu on Sunday, as the deadly virus continued to move westward towards Europe.
A team of experts from the World Health Organization (WHO) headed to the worst-hit regions in Turkey's east to assess the government's response and look for any signs of much-feared human-to-human transmission of the virus.
Two patients in the eastern city of Van and the cases in Ankara were victims of the lethal H5N1 strain of avian influenza, a health ministry official told Anatolia news agency, bringing to nine the number of people to have been infected.
Two of those people, two children from the same family in eastern Turkey, died last week, becoming the first human fatalities from bird flu outside Southeast Asia and China, where the disease has killed more than 70 people since 2003.
The cases in Ankara, situated some 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) from the eastern region where the other infections occurred, mark the further westward spread of the disease.
The two boys, aged two and five, were believed to have touched gloves used by their father to carry to the authorities two wild ducks dead from bird flu that the man found earlier this week outside their hometown of Beypazari, near Ankara, their doctor Metin Dogan said.
"The boys are infected but show no signs of illness at the moment," he said. The third patient, a 60-year-old man from an Ankara suburb, was also in good condition despite contracting the virus after coming in close contact with chicken he bred, his doctor Mahmut Koc said.
In Van four people including two other children, a five-year-old boy and an eight-year-old girl confirmed as H5N1 carriers, were also undergoing treatment.
"What is encouraging is that [the children's] condition has improved and they are currently well," Huseyin Avni Sahin, the chief physician at the hospital, said.
Three other children, all from the same family and aged between 11 and 15, died in the same hospital over the past week after playing with sick chicken. Two of them have been confirmed to have contracted the H5N1 virus.
The infected siblings, one of the new H5N1 cases and most of the other patients undergoing treatment in Van for bird flu were from the remote town of Dogubeyazit, near the border with Iran.
Health minister Recep Akdag, who was accompanying the WHO team in the east, said 12 people were considered as "highly probable" and 32 others as "probable" cases of bird flu. All of them were hospitalized in Van.
There is no indication so far to suggest that the disease is being transmitted between humans, a possibility which scientists fear may spark a deadly global pandemic, he said.
As dozens of panicked people rushed to hospitals across the country and the emergency culling of fowl continued, the presence of the virus among wild birds or poultry was also confirmed in two more regions in western Turkey.
The westernmost point where bird flu has been found since it resurfaced in Turkey last month is the province of Bursa, about 240 kilometers (150 miles) from Istanbul.
In October a first outbreak in a region close to Bursa was successfully contained.
Neighbouring Syria meanwhile announced it was clear of the virus, with an official denying rumors that a man had died from the disease near Syria's northern border with Turkey.
"There is no case of bird flu in Syria. All reports of deaths from this illness are rumors," said health ministry official Mahmoud Karim, adding that a man died recently in the northwest of the country from "pulmonary illness".
Russia said on Sunday it had been asked by the World Health Organisation to send health experts to Turkey.
"At the moment we are looking at the request and the most probable outcome is that several specialists from the health agency responsible for monitoring consumer products will leave for Turkey as soon as possible," Gennady Onishchenko, the agency's head, told the ITAR-TASS news agency.
Bird flu in Turkey spreads toward Europe
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