A second Iraqi Kurd was confirmed to have died from the deadly H5N1 bird flu strain as international teams arrived to combat the spread of the virus in the country´s north.

Hamma Sur Abdallah, 40, who died of flu-like symptoms a little over a week after his niece passed away under similar circumstances, was confirmed as having died of virus by a lab in Cairo, a senior Kurdish health official told AFP.

A few days after Abdallah´s death, the World Health Organisation (WHO) lab confirmed his niece Shajin Abdel Qader had died of bird flu, galvanizing a major local and international response to the possibility of an outbreak.

Earlier Monday the WHO said there were seven more suspected cases of bird flu in Iraqi Kurdistan.

"Apart from the girl who died there are seven suspected cases of bird flu and we have taken their blood samples and sent them to Cairo for further investigation," Naeema al-Gasseer, the WHO representative in Iraq, told reporters before news of Abdallah´s death emerged.

Further tests are underway in Britain on virus samples from Abdallah, as well as on samples from a woman who comes from the same region and remains in hospital.

Meanwhile, a large consignment of masks, gloves and gowns is on its way from the United States to help the war-torn country fight a deadly outbreak.

"What Iraq needs is lots of personal protection equipment such as masks, gloves, gowns and disinfectants to curb the spread of the disease," said Jon C. Bowersox, health attache with the US embassy.

"A 900 kilo (1,980 pound) consignment of this equipment is on its way from the United States to Iraq and will arrive here in the next two days," he told AFP.

Bowersox said the consignment will be distributed across the entire country.

"The idea is to prepare Iraq to ward off any widespread threat," he said.

Bowersox, who is working with the health ministry to help check the spread of the virus, said the issue was not a shortage of medicines or equipment but how to make it quickly available.

The WHO said it was dispatching thousands of doses of the anti-influenza drug Tamiflu after reports of an acute shortage.

Two WHO veterinarians left for the Kurdish city of Arbil on Monday to join an eight-member team which landed in Kurdistan Sunday.

"At the moment this is an agricultural emergency," said one of the vets, Sam Yingst. "But we believe that there is a possibility that it may become a human public emergency though it will require a significant change in the nature of the virus."

A massive cull of poultry has been underway in Kurdistan and Yingst said the tests on the dead girl´s uncle would be key to assessing whether the virus was mutating into something even more dangerous.

"We will come to know from the tests of the second person whether or not the virus has shifted or drifted, but at the moment there is no indication of that because, had it occurred, there would have been more cases," he told reporters.

"And if at all it has happened, then this possibility has been elevated by a very significant notch."

In the province of Diyala along the Iranian border, health ministry officials were spreading disinfectant around poultry producing areas.