State authorities in east India stepped up poultry culling amid fears the latest outbreak of the H5N1 bird flu virus had spread to new areas, officials said today.

Veterinary workers in protective suits have killed 9,373 birds in the Malda district of West Bengal state since Tuesday despite resistance from villagers who want more compensation.

Malda authorities have sent more samples for testing after hundreds of chickens died in the past two days in a different area of the district, about 10 km (6 miles) away from the village regarded as the centre of the latest outbreak, officials said.

Authorities also increased the number of birds they plan to kill in West Bengal by 3,500 to 20,000 after discovering that there were more poultry farms in the area than first thought.

"The start was slow but we have stepped up culling since yesterday. We hope to complete the work by tomorrow," said N.K. Shit, a senior animal resource development official in Malda.

Hundreds of thousands of poultry are already being culled in the northeastern state of Assam and neighbouring Meghalaya.

Health workers and medical experts are also monitoring about 100 villagers in and around Guwahati city in Assam who had shown signs of H5N1 but tests so far indicated none had the virus, health officials said.

There have been no human cases of H5N1 confirmed in India.

Villagers and poultry farmers in Malda are being paid between 20 and 50 rupees (between $0.50 and $1) for each bird killed, depending on its age, but tempers flared when veterinary teams reached the affected areas without spot payments.

Villagers hid their stock to avoid culling, some even beating up veterinary workers, according to local media reports.

"The villagers continue to resist the cull, demanding double the prices for grown-up chickens," senior West Bengal government official Sridhar Ghosh told reporters.


The outbreak in West Bengal was confirmed late on Monday after tests on dead birds, a major blow to the state's 5 billion rupee industry.

Neighbouring states have also been taking precautions such as banning birds from affected states.
Authorities in Orissa state to the south culled 2,000 chickens as a precautionary measure.

Smugglers had tried to sneak birds across the border from West Bengal into Orissa in a passenger bus, officials said.

On Tuesday, Orissa banned the import of poultry from neighbouring states and is checking vehicles at its border.

Monday's confirmation marked the third outbreak of the disease this year in West Bengal, where 4 million birds were culled in January in what the World Health Organisation (WHO) has described as India's worst-ever bird flu outbreak.

Experts fear the H5N1 virus might mutate or combine with the highly contagious seasonal influenza virus and spark a pandemic that could kill millions of people across the world.

There have been no human cases of H5N1 in India since the virus was first reported in Maharashtra state in 2006.

According to the World Health Organisation, H5N1 bird flu has infected 391 people in 15 countries and killed 247 of them since the virus resurfaced in Asia in 2003.