South Korea confirmed its first case of bird flu for more than a month yesterday, dashing hopes it had seen the last of an epidemic that has ravaged poultry flocks and killed 24 people across Asia. The outbreak ? at a farm in Kyonggi province near Seoul ? was the first new case since February 5 and 16,000 poultry birds at the affected farm have been destroyed, the agriculture ministry said.

Officials kept up the cull on Monday, scrambling to pick up live birds, stuff them in bags and then hit the sacks with spades. The bags were then being buried on a nearby mountainside. The aim is to destroy 400,000 chickens and ducks within a three-km radius of the affected farm, officials said.

Agriculture Minister Huh Sang-man visited the area yesterday and called for thorough disinfection to contain the outbreak, the ministry said in a statement. ?One farm located in the city of Yangju has tested positive for highly pathogenic avian influenza,? it said. Yangju is about 40 km north of the capital, Seoul. Farms within a radius of 30 km to 40 km would be checked twice a day for new outbreaks. Before the latest discovery, South Korea had destroyed nearly five million poultry birds and confirmed outbreaks at 19 farms across the country since early December.

Certain strains of bird flu can be fatal to humans, although South Korea has had no human deaths. The strain of bird flu in the country was different from the one that killed people in Vietnam and Thailand, South Korea said, citing tests by a US disease control agency. The ministry said more than 2,000 chickens shipped from the affected farm to a slaughterhouse south of Seoul would be killed.

The virulent H5N1 avian flu virus had also been found in a magpie captured and tested in the southern city of Yangsan, where an outbreak was reported in January. But it was not expected to pose a significant threat as the incubation period was short in magpies, the ministry added.?We tested 99 magpies and one crow in Yangsan after the disease confirmation on January 11 and one magpie was confirmed to have the disease on Saturday,? its statement said.

South Korea?s poultry consumption was hit badly by bird flu this year and exports of chickens and chicken meat to Japan, Hong Kong and China were halted. Local feed production for poultry in January also dropped 11.5 percent from a year earlier to 288,407 tonnes, industry data showed.

Lee Jae-won