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BEIJING : China on Wednesday reported its first new bird flu outbreak in about a month at a large poultry farm where 15,000 chickens died last week.
The fowl died on February 2 and 3 at the farm in Yangquan city in northern China's Shanxi province, the agriculture ministry said on its website.
Local authorities immediately started culling poultry within a three-kilometre radius of the affected farm, and have so far destroyed 187,745 fowl, the ministry said.
A government laboratory confirmed on Tuesday that the outbreak was the deadly H5N1 strain of the bird flu virus, it said.
China has reported more than 30 outbreaks of the virus among poultry since the beginning of last year, with most appearing since October.
The last outbreak was reported on January 10 in the southern province of Guizhou. At that time, state media said it was the 33rd outbreak in China since early 2005.
China has also recorded 10 human cases of bird flu, with seven fatalities. - AFP/de
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