This figure shows the ice mass loss in Antarctica as observed by Grace over the period 2002 to 2005 measured in cubic kilometers per year. The ice mass loss observed contributes about 0.4 millimeters (.016 inches) per year to global sea level rise.

Her death comes days after the government confirmed that a 32-year-old man had died from the H5N1 virus in the southern province of Guangdong, near Hong Kong, triggering alarm there.

"The epidemic situation is very severe. Right now is spring, when there is a high chance of bird flu outbreaks due to the frequent movement of migratory birds. This epidemic has not been effectively controlled worldwide," China's deputy agriculture minister Yin Chengjie told reporters.

The virus has spread rapidly since the beginning of February, killing birds in at least 15 new countries as it moves deeper into Europe and Africa.

Nigeria said highly pathogenic bird flu has been found in three new states, including one in the far south, indicating that the virus has spread all over Africa's most populous country despite measures to contain it.

Including the girl's case, bird flu has infected 176 people, killing 96 of them since 2003, and scientists fear it is only a matter of time before the virus mutates into a form that passes easily among people, triggering a pandemic. Millions could die and economies crippled for months.

To try to combat the growing threat, the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization is to play a greater role in fighting bird flu, becoming a "global clearing house" for efforts to stem the spread of the virus, it said on Tuesday.

The United States and the European Union have backed the formation of what a senior U.S. official called an "emergency operations center" at the FAO's Rome headquarters.

Funding for the center will come from a pot of almost $2 billion pledged by wealthy nations at an international conference in Beijing in January. The United States would provide experts to help run the center and expects other nations to follow suit.

In China, the latest human deaths have raised questions over how the virus is spreading.

The 32-year-old man is the first bird flu death in an urban center in China and occurred in an area where there have been no reports of the disease in birds. He was believed to have contracted the virus at a poultry market.

The dead girl, from Anji County, had visited relatives who kept poultry, and some chickens raised there had died during at least one of her visits, Xinhua said.

"The recent cases that we've seen are cases reported in areas where no poultry outbreaks have been reported, but this does not mean that they were not exposed to infected poultry," said Aphaluck Bhatiasevi, the World Health Organization's Beijing spokeswoman.

Zhong Nanshan, director of the Guangzhou Institute of Respiratory Diseases, said both victims might have been infected by chickens carrying the virus but not sickened by it.

"There is a possibility there could be human cases of H5N1 in places without outbreaks of the disease in birds. That is, there could be chickens carrying the virus but which are not sick themselves and they can infect people," Zhong told reporters in Beijing.

With bird flu continuing its march into more countries, the appetite for poultry has nosedived in parts of Europe, Africa and Asia, despite politicians' publicly eating poultry and the WHO reminding people that well-cooked chicken and eggs are safe.

In India, chicken is off the menu for many even though the government says a major bird flu outbreak in poultry two weeks ago has been stamped out.

At Sadiq Sunesra's half-century-old Mumbai restaurant, not one among the dozens walking in are tempted to buy pieces of crisp roast chicken lying invitingly in a glass case.

"Just now a customer called to order a dozen dishes of chicken biryani (chicken and rice), but changed the order on a second thought," Sunesra said. "I told her to read the newspaper, which says chicken is safe to eat. But it was useless."

In the United States, food company executives say they are ready for bird flu if it arrives there.

Their plans include offering more non-poultry products in stores, double-checking with suppliers to ensure their poultry is disease-free and advising customers that cooked poultry is safe.

The flu is a very serious infection, which has existed among birds for millions of years," he said. "In 1918, the Spanish influenza killed about 50 million people all over the world."

The history of fighting a pandemic shows that "quarantine measures are unable to hold in check the circulation of the virus," he said.

"Even a vaccine is a means of individual protection. A good vaccine can save a person not from the disease itself but from death and complications," he said.

Experts all over the world fear that H5N1 virus, which has killed more than 90 people since 2003, mostly in Asia, may mutate into a form that can pass between humans, sparking a deadly epidemic. A four-year-old boy who died in Indonesia last week, became the latest suspected bird flu victim.

China said on Wednesday that a nine-year-old girl had become the 10th person to die from bird flu, bringing the global death toll since 2003 to 96.

In Germany, Agriculture Minister Horst Seehofer said late on Tuesday the discovery of the dead cats a week after the first feline infection in Germany signalled a heightened risk of infection for humans.

"This means that the virus is not confined to a single case of a mammal but has spread to several cases. Therefore, bird flu has clearly moved closer to humans," he told Bayerischer Rundfunk radio.

The two cats were found in the same area of the Baltic Sea island of Ruegen as a cat discovered dead last week, which proved to be the first mammal in Europe to be infected with the virus. The first cat is believed to have eaten infected birds.

However Germany's national veterinary laboratory, the Friedrich Loeffler Institute, said the risk of the first case of human infection in the
European Union had not risen as a result of the discovery.

The World Health Organisation has said there is no evidence that cats can be involved in the spread of the disease.

Meanwhile the deadly H5N1 bird flu that has moved from Asia to Europe and Africa will probably extend its reach into other continents, the head of the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE), Bernard Vallat, said Wednesday.

"The likelihood that this strain will appear in Australia is very high," Vallat said, adding that "the possibility was also very high in the United States and Canada."

The three countries "had done rather advanced analyses and they are pessimistic" about escaping bird flu contamination, he told French lawmakers during a hearing on bird flu in Paris.

Earlier this week WHO director-general Lee Jong Wook warned again of a global pandemic if the virus mutated into a form that could be easily spread between humans.

Currently, humans are believed to be contracting the virus from poultry.

The girl who died in China was from the eastern province of Zhejiang, which has not recorded any outbreak of bird flu. Reports however said she had gone to a neighbouring area to visit relatives who were keeping infected chickens.

Her death came just days after that of a man in southern China, raising fears of the virus spreading to Hong Kong.

China's vice agriculture minister Yin Chengjie warned that the country faced the danger of more outbreaks of bird flu.

"We are coming into a period where the bird flu will be highly transmissible. As the weather warms up, more wild birds will be migrating and it will be easier for the bird flu to be transmitted to a wider area," Yin said.

Albania's first case was discovered in a chicken near the coastal town of Saranda, about 50 kilometres (31 miles) north of the Greece, Agriculture Minister Jemin Gjana said.

Four new cases of the highly pathogenic H5 bird flu virus have been confirmed in ducks in Sweden, bringing the total number to 10, the Swedish Board of Agriculture said on Wednesday.

Researchers have however yet to determine whether the Swedish ducks died from the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu, the most aggressive form of the virus that has been lethal to humans.

In Poland, authorities have isolated some 50 wild swans and placed them under observation in an aviary some 50 wild swans at Torun, in northern Poland, where three birds were found dead of the H5N1 virus.

The head of the OIE took the European Union to task for not coming through with 122 million dollars in aid for countries affected, particularly in Africa, that was promised at a bird flu China in Beijing in mid-January.