CAIRO - A 25-YEAR-OLD Egyptian woman died of bird flu on Sunday, the second fatality among humans in Egypt in less than one week, the Health Ministry said.

Ms Fatma Fathi Mohamed died in hospital in the Nile Delta city of Mansoura, three days after she was admitted to a smaller local hospital with a high temperature and difficulty breathing, it said in a statement carried by the state news agency MENA.

Her death was the 17th in Egypt since the deadly virus arrived in February 2006 and it was the 42nd case of bird flu reported among humans in the Arab world's most populous country.

On Wednesday last week another 25-year-old woman, Ms Ola Younis, died of bird flu in Beni Suef province south of Cairo, the first case of this winter season.

It is the third winter that the virus has struck, after appearing to remain dormant during the hot summers.

The health ministry said on Thursday that two other Egyptians had contracted the disease and were receiving treatment. But the latest death was not one of those and one health official said those two were still in hospital.

Mr John Jabbour, an official at the World Health Organisation (WHO), said last week that the new cases were not surprising.

'The agent is there... Since July we've had no human cases and many things calmed down, so people returned to dealing with live birds as usual. Since the virus is there, we expect to have human cases. It's not a surprise at all,' Mr Jabbour said.

The government has promoted a poultry vaccination programme but coercive measures are hard to enforce.

Around 5 million households in Egypt depend on poultry as a main source of food and income, and the government has said this makes it unlikely the disease can be eradicated.

Health experts fear the virus could mutate into a form that spreads easily from one person to another, possibly triggering a pandemic that could kill millions.

The virus has killed 212 people since it re-emerged in 2003, according to the most recent figures from the WHO.