"Tests carried out at a WHO-affiliated laboratory had confirmed local results showing the man died of the virus of bird flu," WHO spokesman Dick Thompson said, adding that this was the 35th person who dead of bird flu in the country.

WHO tests also confirmed that two more Indonesians -- an 18-year-old man from Surabaya, the capital of East Java province, and a 43-year-old Jakarta man -- had contracted bird flu and were recovering in hospital.

More than 120 people have died of bird flu around the world since late 2003, the vast majority of them in Asia.

The Jakarta man was being treated at the Sulianti Saroso hospital in the capital, the country's premier bird flu treatment centre.

WHO experts said there may have been limited human-to-human transmission but insisted the virus had not mutated into a more easily transmissible form.

Indonesia has had more bird flu deaths than any other country this year. It has the world's second highest number of fatalities since 2003, after Vietnam. So far, nine Indonesians who were infected have survived.