HONG KONG (AFP) - Hong Kong health officials were Wednesday testing a starling found dead with suspected bird flu.

Authorities said preliminary tests indicated the bird, found in the densely populated Mong Kok district, was infected with H5 flu, but they could not yet say whether it was the killer H5N1 strain. Further tests are being conducted.

More than a dozen wild birds have been found dead in Hong Kong with the H5N1 virus, which has killed almost 200 people and ravaged poultry flocks worldwide since 2003.

Migratory birds have been blamed for the global spread of the disease.

Biologists believe local species of wild birds found dead with the virus could have picked it up from contact with infected flocks in mainland China, where it is believed the strain first mutated into a form deadly to humans.

Hong Kong was the scene of the world´s first reported major bird flu outbreak among humans in 1997, when six people died.

World Health Organisation experts say a pandemic of the virus among humans would kill millions worldwide.