The victims, all farmers, came from dozens of different villages around the neighbouring cities of Ziyang and Neijiang, Xinhua news agency said.

All of them showed similar symptoms such as fever, fatigue, nausea and vomiting and later became comatose, it said.

Two of the victims had recovered while 12 were in critical condition and 27 others were stable.

According to a preliminary investigation, the affected farmers had butchered sick pigs or sheep before coming down with the mystery illness, Xinhua said.

The World Health Organisation said there was no sign of a massive outbreak of the unknown disease.

"The one reassuring thing here is that from the information we have, the information that China shared with us, this does not appear to be transmitting person to person between people, so it's an environmental source, it's something in the environment that largely farmers came in touch with," WHO spokesman Bob Dietz told RTHK radio in Hong Kong.

"It seems linked to farm animals, either sheep or pigs... but it's not an outbreak in the terms of a disease that is spreading rapidly and is transmissible between human beings."

The victims of the unknown disease have all been farmers, aged between 30-70, who apparently did not have any contact with each other, an earlier news report on the provincial government's website said.

After receiving a report from local health departments, the Ministry of Health in Beijing has sent a team to investigate the disease, the report said.

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