Islampur : At least 12 children have died of an unknown fever in villages of two gram panchayats in North Dinajpur over the past four days. The outbreak of the fever has prompted the district health department to send a team of doctors to the affected villages in Rasakhawa and Domohana gram panchayats. According to health sources, at least 25 more children in the area are suffering from fever. The sources added that most of the children who died were aged between three and 10 years. The death of a two-month-old girl has also been reported from the area. The chief medical officer of health of North Dinajpur, Sudhangshu Shekhar Sahu, said: "We are yet to identify the exact nature of the fever.' According to the Karandighi block medical officer of health, Robin Roy, all the victims first developed high fever before having convulsions and dying. Ashit Banerjee, a paediatrician who accompanied the health team to the villages in Karandighi, said the outbreak seemed to be that of a virulent form of encephalitis. "The children died within seven-eight hours of the onset of high fever. Even Japanese encephalitis, which is mosquito borne, kills people only after 14 hours,' Banerjee said. "We have told the block health officials in Karandighi to clear all stagnant water immediately and send blood samples collected from affected children to the district hospital at Raiganj and the School of Tropical Medicine in Calcutta. "There is no treatment for encephalitis, but we can try to control the fever and prevent secondary infection by administering antibiotics,' the paediatrician added. According to sources in the panchayat, the first incidents were reported from a village in Rashakhawa area when two children died on June 13. Yesterday, two more deaths occurred at the Karandighi rural hospital. Mojammel Haq, a villager from the Rashakhawa area, said his three-year-old son, Saidur Rehman, was fine when he had dinner and went to bed last night. "He suddenly fell ill this morning and we took him to the rural health centre where he became unconscious and died.' "There is no health facility existing here and the doctors are just distributing paracetamol tablets,' another villager added. The town nearest to the area is Raiganj, located around 30km away.