(Recasts, adds quotes, details) KOLKATA, India, Dec 18 (Reuters) - India sealed part of its border with Bangladesh on Thursday amid fears the latest outbreak of the H5N1 bird flu virus had spread to new areas, officials said. Authorities in West Bengal state have killed about 10,000 birds in the Malda district which borders Bangladesh since Tuesday, despite resistance from villagers who want more compensation, after tests proved a new outbreak in the area. "We have already sealed the border with Bangladesh along Malda district to check the spread of bird flu through chickens and ducks smuggled in from the other side," West Bengal's animal resource development minister Anisur Rahman told Reuters. Hundreds of thousands of birds have also been culled in India's northeastern Assam state and neighbouring Meghalaya since an outbreak was detected there last month. While there has been no recent outbreak in Bangladesh, India's impoverished neighbour suffered a severe bird flu epidemic starting in March 2007. Millions of birds were culled, costing the poultry industry hundreds of millions of dollars. 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. "We hope to complete the work by tomorrow," said N.K. Shit, a senior animal resource development official in Malda. Health workers 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. 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 the birds across the border from West Bengal into Orissa in a passenger bus, officials said. 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. According to the WHO, H5N1 bird flu has infected 391 people in 15 countries and killed 247 of them since the virus resurfaced in Asia in 2003. (Additional reporting by Jatindra Dash; Editing by Matthias Williams and Dean Yates)
Health workers cull poultry at Shoilpur village, about 345 km (214 miles) north of the eastern Indian city of Kolkata December 18, 2008. State authorities in east India stepped up poultry ...
