China reported its fourth bird flu outbreak in three weeks late Thursday, saying the virus killed 8,940 chickens in a village in the country's northeast and prompted authorities to destroy 369,900 other birds.
The outbreak occurred Oct. 26 in Badaohao, a village in Liaoning province, east of Beijing, the Agriculture Ministry said in a report posted late Thursday on the Web site of the Paris-based World Organization for Animal Health.
The report came despite government efforts to tighten controls on China's 5.2 billion chickens, ducks and other poultry and to vaccinate millions of birds.
China hasn't reported any human infections, but experts have warned that one is inevitable if the country can't stop repeated outbreaks in poultry.