The World Health Organization has confirmed a 16-year-old Indonesian boy of positive for the H5N1 avian flu virus, making him the 12th confirmed case among humans including seven deaths in the country, a health official said on Saturday.

"The result of test from the Hong Kong laboratory was positive," Hariadi Wibisono, a director at the Indonesian Health Ministry told Xinhua through telephone, adding the patient was being treated at a hospital in Bandung in West Java province.

More than 6o people have died from the bird flu virus in Asia since 2003, the bulk of them in Vietnam and Thailand. Experts fear the virus could mutate into a form that spreads easily from human to human.