Nearly 200,000 chickens have been culled in northern China after the world's most populous nation reported its first outbreak of bird flu in nearly a month, the government said.
The outbreak occurred in a large poultry farm in northern China's Shanxi province, with 15,000 chickens there dying from the virus in two days last week, the agriculture ministry said on its website on Wednesday.
Local authorities immediately started culling poultry within a three-kilometre (two-mile) radius of the affected farm, and have so far destroyed 187,745 fowl, the ministry said.
China has now reported 34 outbreaks of the deadly H5N1 strain of the virus among poultry since the beginning of last year, with most appearing since October.
