Pakistan ? International health experts have been dispatched to Pakistan to help investigate the cause of South Asia’s first outbreak of bird flu in people and determine whether the virus could have been transmitted through human contact, officials said Sunday.

Four brothers – two of whom died – and two cousins from Abbotabad, a small city about 30 miles north of Islamabad, were suspected of being infected by the H5N1 virus, said WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl in Geneva. A man and his niece from the same area who had slaughtered chickens were also suspected of having the virus.

Another person who slaughtered poultry in Mansehra, 15 miles away, also tested positive for the disease, he said.

The H5N1 virus has killed at least 208 people worldwide, mostly in Southeast Asia and China, since it began ravaging Asian poultry stocks in late 2003. So far, most human cases have been linked to contact with sick birds.