The quarantine imposed on an area in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, which was hit by an outbreak of bird flu last month, has been lifted, local authorities announced on Wednesday.

A ceremony was held to mark the lifting of the quarantine in Jiuyuan District of Baotou city on Wednesday morning.

Experts with the regional headquarters for the prevention of major animal-related epidemics said that no new outbreak of bird flu had been reported since the last poultry was culled 21 days ago.

Nearly 1,000 chickens and ducks were reported to have died suddenly on a poultry farm in Xincheng Village of Jiuyuan District in Baotou City on September 27. The national avian influenza laboratory later confirmed that the H5N1 virus was found in samples of the dead poultry. About 30,000 fowls within three kilometers of the farm were subsequently slaughtered. No human infections were found.

A total of 42.6 million domestic fowls in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region have received compulsory inoculations.

"The inoculation rate has reached 100 percent in the autonomous region," said the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region Bird Flu Control Headquarters Office.

Three million domestic fowls in Baotou had been inoculated by October 11. Poultry and egg products from the bird flu-stricken areas were not put on sale.

Two outbreaks of bird flu have been reported last month, which killed around 2,000 domestic poultry in the Inner Mongolia and Ningxia Hui autonomous regions.

(Xinhua News Agency October 25, 2006)