With four deaths already confirmed here in two months and mounting international concern that bird flu could mutate into a major killer of humans, Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari warned of more infections.

"This can be classified as an epidemic and most definitely there will be others as long as we are unable to positively identify the sources," Supari told reporters.

The H5N1 strain of bird flu has killed 63 people in Southeast Asia since 2003, the majority of them in Vietnam, and health experts say a major and quick-spreading pandemic internationally could kill millions.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) said Tuesday that any global outbreak could be impossible to contain after several weeks, amid worries that the virus could mutate into a form more easily communicable to humans.

"It's obvious that a pandemic will occur, all the conditions are in place," WHO director general Lee Jong-Wook said on Monday. "The problem now is time."

The Indonesian government on Monday gave bird flu "extraordinary incident" priority status to focus attention on the outbreak in this vast archipelago nation.

"I do not want to wait for more deaths to take place. That's why we are moving forward and one of the measures is by declaring the extraordinary incident," the health minister said.

A five-year-old Indonesian girl who died in hospital showing symptoms of bird flu may be the latest victim of the virus here, said Sardikin Giriputro, deputy director of the Sulianti Saroso Hospital for respiratory ailments.

"The patient that was admitted (Tuesday) has now died," he said.

Sardikin said the girl had been transferred to his facility from a private Jakarta hospital. He declined to give further details but cautioned that there was no confirmation as yet of the cause of death.

But Supari said that the child had had acute peneumonia "with signs that it was caused by virus". Tests were being done to check if it was the deadly strain of bird flu, she said.

Authorities announced Indonesia's fourth confirmed bird flu death on Friday, a 37-year-old Jakarta woman.

Health officials have not revealed exactly what caused her death but Georg Petersen, WHO's Indonesia representative, said she lived in an area with many chickens, ducks and even a slaughterhouse.

A Jakarta father and his two daughters died of bird flu in July. The government has said that infected chicken droppings are suspected to have caused those deaths.

The five-year-old girl who died Wednesday was one of seven people being treated for symptoms of bird flu at the hospital, and was the last of the patients to arrive there.

Tests on two of the six others have been positive for bird flu but the diagnosis is currently being confirmed with further tests in Hong Kong, Sardikin said.

The four other patients remained under observation and all were in stable condition, he said.

Supari said her ministry and the agriculture minister are conducting surveillance in high-risk areas and districts where previous cases have occurred.

Jakarta's zoo has been shut down since Sunday because of an outbreak of bird flu there.

Petersen said Tuesday that the WHO was pleased with Indonesia's efforts while acknowledging the difficulties in an underdeveloped country of about 112 million people