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Health Minister Yacov Ben Yizri on Monday evening announced the renewal of administration anti-flu inoculations.

The decision to reinstate the vaccinations was taken following consultations with the French manufacturer of the vaccine, Sanofi-Aventis.

Flu shots were suspended Sunday after four Israelis died this week and last week shortly after receiving the inoculations.

But Ben Yizri said that "all the experts, doctors and pathologists have ruled out any possibility of a connection between the incidents that unfortunately occurred in Kiryat Gat and the administration of the inoculation. This was the unequivocal opinion of each and every expert following thorough clarifications of the matter."

According to the minister, the reason flu shots were not renewed earlier Monday, following unanimous statements by experts that the incidents had no relation to the shots, was that the Health Ministry wished to wait for "clear and unequivocal explanations from the foreign manufacturer who announced that they were never informed of deaths caused by this inoculation."

The ministry decided to renew administration of the flu shots once all the data were received.

The French manufacturer of the vaccine, Sanofi-Aventis, said that it was sending experts to Israel to study the deaths of the people who had recently received flu shots.

Sanofi-Aventis said its team in Israel would try to find out more about the people who died. The four people, who were elderly and suffered from chronic illnesses, had received flu shots up to six days before their deaths, company spokesman Alain Bernal said.

Bernal said the vaccine had passed numerous safety checks, both in France and Israel, and that 140,000 people had received the shot in Israel alone.

"We are taking this seriously, we are studying it seriously, but we have total confidence in the quality of our product," Bernal said. "This is a vaccine that saves thousands of lives every year."

The four persons who died are Shimon Amar, 76, from Kiryat Gat; Yitzhak Azoulay, 68, Kiryat Gat; Nadav Yerushalmi, 53, Moshav Shekef; and Ziggo Kalenstein, 67, of Petah Tikva. The Health Ministry said Sunday that all four were inoculated with vaccine from the same series and purchased from the same manufacturer, the French pharmaceutical firm Sanofi-Aventis, which markets the vaccine all over the world.

The decision to call a halt to the inoculations was made by Ben-Yizri and ministry heads Sunday afternoon, after the Kiryat Gat HMO reported the three deaths.

Two of the three were inoculated last Sunday. One died a day later, and the second over the weekend. The third person was inoculated on Monday and died three days later.

The report of the fourth death came while Ben-Yizri was giving a press conference, a few minutes after he told reporters "no connection has been found between the tragedy and the flu inoculations."

The three men from Kiryat Gat who died had all been inoculated in previous years.

The Health Ministry has started an investigation into possible sources of contamination but so far none has been found in the vaccine; some 140,000 people were inoculated over the last week. The Health Ministry also investigated the medical team at the Kiryat Gat clinic. The shots were administered to all three Kiryat Gat recipients by the same nurse.

The vaccines were supplied to the clinic after the Health Ministry conducted its usual standards and quality tests.