JAKARTA, Oct. 13 (Xinhua) -- A 12-year-old Indonesian boy died of bird flu on Saturday, bringing total death toll from the disease in the country to 88, said a health ministry official.

    "The boy died this morning," Daswir Nurdin, an official of the anti-bird flu center of the ministry, told Xinhua.

    He said both of the boy's lungs had been severely attacked by the virus, and the boy "had contacts with bodies of dead chickens near his school."

    The death put the total fatalities to 88 out of 109 human infections in the hardest-hit country.

    The boy, from Tanggerang city on the outskirts of capital Jakarta, began feeling unwell on Sept. 30 and went to a clinic on Oct. 4. Four days later he was treated at a hospital in the town before being transferred to the designated bird-flu hospital in Jakarta, said Nurdin. So far, the virus has killed globally 198 out of 326 infected people.

    Experts fear the highly pathogenic H5N1 virus could mutate in a certain level that could make it transmittable among humans, which eventually causes a pandemic where millions could be killed.