JAKARTA (AFP) - A young Indonesian girl who died at the weekend on the island of Sumatra was not infected with bird flu, a health ministry official said Monday.

The 10-year-old was admitted to hospital on Saturday suffering symptoms that led doctors to suspect she could be carrying the H5N1 virus, which has killed 88 people in Indonesia, the highest number anywhere in the world.

"The test result is negative," said Haris Sugiantoro, an official at the health ministry's bird flu information centre.

If the ministry result is positive, a second test is carried out at a separate laboratory before a patient is confirmed as infected with bird flu in Indonesia.

The H5N1 strain of bird flu is endemic in birds across nearly all of Indonesia. Scientists worry that the virus could mutate into a form more easily transmissible between humans, triggering a global pandemic.

Indonesia, the world's fourth most populous nation, reporded its first human case of bird flu in July 2005.