Swedish authorities said Wednesday that tests had confirmed that two wild ducks found on its east coast carried the H5N1 strain of bird flu.

Preliminary tests late last month showed that two wild ducks found near the Baltic port city of Oskarshamn carried the aggressive H5 virus, but more tests were needed to ascertain that they were cases of the deadly H5N1 strain.

"The laboratory in Weybridge (United Kingdom) has now confirmed that it is an H5N1 virus, just as we thought," the National Veterinary Institute said in a statement.

Since the first two cases were found, around a dozen wild birds found along Sweden's southeast coast and on the Baltic island of Gotland have been identified as carrying the H5 virus.

No cases have been reported in domestic fowl.

Neighboring Denmark has found its first case of the highly pathogenic H5 bird flu virus in a wild fowl, officials said Wednesday.

Denmark, a major poultry producer with an output worth 3 billion crowns (US$483.5 million) a year, has been on guard against bird flu since disease was found on the German Baltic island of Ruegen, near Denmark's southern coast in mid-February.

Denmark has since examined more than 100 dead wild birds for avian flu.

Meanwhile, authorities in western India prepared to cull tens of thousands of chickens Wednesday to prevent the spread of bird flu.

In India's western state of Maharashtra, tests were infected chickens there had H5N1, said Upma Chowdhary of the federal animal husbandry department.

India has reported no human infections of the virus.

A cull of about 75,000 chickens started Wednesday in a 10-kilometre radius around four Indian villages where the outbreak was first spotted in mid-February, Chowdhary said.

Nearly 250 workers will slaughter the birds and clear their droppings and other waste over the next seven to eight says, Chowdhary said.

Concerns over the global spread of bird flu were heightened again this week when the Caucasus nation of Azerbaijan reported three people killed by the virus, which also has killed 98 other people in Asia, the Middle East and Turkey since 2003, according to the World Health Organization.

The North Korea said Wednesday it was closely monitoring migratory birds as a precaution against bird flu and had locked up all local poultry in an effort to protect them from any birds carrying the disease.

All local poultry has been "cooped up" to prevent contact with wild birds, said Mun Ung-jo, vice-chairman of North Korean main quarantine office, according to the Korean Central News Agency.

In Afghanistan, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization said it hoped to find out soon whether five swab samples from poultry in backyard farms in the capital, Kabul, and the eastern city of Jalalabad, tested positive for H5N1.

The samples have already tested positive for H5, but the virus' specific subtype was not known.

In Southeast Asia, Myanmar said it has culled 5,000 birds in a 3-kilometer radius of a farm where the country's first case of H5N1 was detected last week.

It also banned the sale of chicken and eggs near the property where 112 chickens died, in the city of Mandalay, according to the Livestock Breeding and Veterinary Department.

(China Daily March 16, 2006)