Bird flu H5N1 strain kills 11,172 fowls in China

Bird flu has killed 11,172 poultry in central China, the official Xinhua News Agency said Saturday, the country's first reported outbreak of the H5N1 virus in three months. The poultry in Shijiping, a village in Hunan province, died of the H5N1 strain of bird flu, Xinhua said. Another 52,874 were slaughtered, said the report, which did not give any other details or say when the outbreak occurred. The last reported cases occurred in March, when the disease struck a poultry market in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa. Some 680 chickens died and another 6,990 birds were culled.