JAKARTA (Reuters) - A 7-year-old Indonesian girl who died this week has shown up positive for bird flu in local tests, a health ministry spokeswoman said on Friday.

The girl´s samples have been sent to a World Health Organization-accredited laboratory in Hong Kong for confirmation. Local test results are not considered definitive.

The girl from the Pamulang area on the outskirts of Jakarta died on Thursday on the way to Sulianti Saroso hospital after being treated for two days in a hospital in South Jakarta, said health ministry spokeswoman Lily Sulistyowati.

Sulianti Saroso hospital is the designated bird flu center in Jakarta.

"She had trouble breathing and had lost consciousness when she was admitted to the hospital," Sulistyowati said.

Two days before the girl died, her 10-year-old brother also died after suffering flu-like symptoms, but health officials did not manage to get his samples, she said.

The family reported that a number of chickens near their house died before the children went sick, she added.

Sulistyowati said the children´s parents and their two siblings were taking Tamiflu after suffering similar flu-like symptoms, but they refused to be admitted to a hospital.

Indonesia has seen a steady rise in its number of human infections and deaths since its first known of outbreak of H5N1 in poultry in late 2003. It has infected 48 Indonesians and killed 36 of them.

Bird flu remains essentially an animal disease but climbing human deaths have put many countries around the world on alert for fear it may mutate into one that could pass easily among people and trigger a pandemic, killing millions.

Indonesia drew international intention last month when the virus killed as many as seven members of a single family in North Sumatra. Experts said there could have been limited human-to-human transmission in this cluster case.

But they stressed genetic analyses of the virus has not shown all of the traits that are known so far to allow it to spread easily among people.

On Thursday, workers culled around 1,600 chickens in a village in Tasikmalaya, West Java where a 15-year-old boy died of bird flu on May 30.

The boy tested positive for bird flu in local tests but the WHO has yet to confirm the case.