OTTAWA -- The Foreign Affairs Department is confirming that a Canadian citizen has died in Vietnam.

A spokesman says consular officials in Ho Chi Minh City are in contact with authorities there to try to get more information.

Foreign Affairs had no further information on the circumstances of the death and said no details, including the name of the citizen, could be released due to privacy concerns.

But a Vietnamese newspaper, Tuoi Tre, identified the Canadian as 26-year-old Cathy Huynh on its English language website.

Tuoi Tre is reporting that health officials are investigating the possibility that Huynh and an American woman she was travelling with died of some sort of poisoning.

The newspaper says the two women were sharing a room in the tourism city of Nha Trang.

The paper, which quotes hospital officials, says Huynh took the American woman Karin Joy Bowerman, 27, to hospital Monday night after she became ill.

Bowerman later died of respiratory failure, then Huynh also became ill and died early Thursday.

Doctors have not pinpointed a cause of the womens' death, Dr Nguyen Van Xang, deputy director of Khanh Hoa Province General Hospital told Tuoi Tre.

An unnamed official with the Khanh Hoa Province Health Department told Tuoi Tre that it's likely that the two women had suffered poisoning.

It's not known where in Canada Huynh was from.

Foreign Affairs is offering consular assistance to the family if needed.