Bird flu found in chickens in India's remote northeast

GAUHATI, India: Authorities in India's remote northeast said Wednesday that bird flu was responsible for the deaths of 130 chickens in the area and began slaughtering poultry, officials said.

The presence of the deadly H5N1 virus was found in samples from a farm in the state of Manipur, near the border with Myanmar, said Bimal Singh, a senior official in the Manipur chief minister's office.

The local government has sent teams of health officials to the area and started slaughtering chicken and other poultry within a five-kilometer (three mile) radius of the Chenngmeirong village where the chickens died, he said.

The dead chickens were found earlier in the month and samples were sent to India's High Risk Animal Disease Laboratory in the central Indian city of Bhopal, said Singh.

India confirmed an outbreak of H5N1 in the west last year, but declared itself bird flu free The H5N1 virus has killed at least 192 people, largely in Asia, since late 2003, according to the World Health Organization.

Most of the fatalities have been among people who work in close contact with poultry.