S. Korea Reports New Outbreak Of Avian Flu

SEOUL, Nov. 25 -- South Korea said Saturday that an outbreak of lethal bird flu at a poultry farm was caused by the highly virulent H5N1 strain of the virus, the country's first case in three years.

The Agriculture Ministry said earlier this week it suspected bird flu had killed 6,000 chickens at a farm in the southwest that lies on a path for migratory birds.

"It is the H5N1 strain," a ministry official said.

The ministry ordered the culling of 236,000 birds near the farm in North Cholla province about 100 miles from Seoul, officials said.

Quarantine authorities also banned the shipment of more than 5 million birds from 221 farms within 6 miles of the farm.

There were no reports to suggest local residents or quarantine officials had been infected, another Agriculture Ministry official said.

Between December 2003 and March 2004, about 400,000 poultry at South Korean farms were infected by bird flu. The country culled 5.3 million birds and spent about $1.6 billion on preventing the spread of the disease, officials said.

Subsequent testing in the United States indicated at least nine South Korean workers involved in the cull had been infected with the H5N1 virus, but none reported illnesses.

The World Health Organization said that as of Nov. 13, there had been 258 cases of human infection of the H5N1 strain since 2003, killing 153 people. Many of the victims were Asians, with 98 deaths in Vietnam and Indonesia, WHO said.