Birds flu outbreak in S Korea

The mass culling began after the flu hit a poultry farm at Iksan, 230 kilometers (140 miles) southwest of Seoul, on November 22 before spreading to a second farm nearby two days later.

The Iksan city government said in a statement the number of poultry slaughtered totalled some 771,000 as of Sunday, after a military-backed quarantine in the areas around the disease-hit farms.

Prime Minister Han Myeong-Sook visited Iksan yesterday and expressed satisfaction at the mass culling and other quarantine measure taken by local governments against the avian flu, Yonhap news agency said.

Health officials had culled and buried 158,000 chickens within a 500-meter (546-yard) radius of the outbreaks, and on Thursday extended the culling to all farms in a three-kilometer radius.

In the 500-meter quarantine zone, more than 440 pigs and dogs were also killed amid complaints from animal rights activists.

On Friday, military troops were deployed to run checkpoints near the affected farms on the outskirts of Iksan, the first time the military has been called to help in the crisis.

The latest bird flu outbreak in Iksan marks the first emergence of the potentially deadly H5N1 virus in South Korea in three years.

South Korea was the first country to report avian flu when the latest outbreaks, the largest and most severe on record, began in Asia in mid-2003.

From December 2003 to March 2004, 5.3 million ducks and chickens were destroyed at a cost of 150 billion won (160 million dollars). In December last year the nation had declared itself free of the virus.

H5N1, which is spread through contact with sick animals, has killed more than 150 people worldwide since late 2003 and triggered mass culls of tens of millions of poultry.