Veterinary workers began throttling more than 70,000 birds in western India yesterday, stepping up efforts to contain a second outbreak of avian influenza in poultry.

?There is no time for niceties. The birds have to be killed as fast as possible,? said Bijay Kumar, animal husbandry commissioner of the state of Maharashtra, where bird flu resurfaced this week in backyard poultry.

Veterinary and civic workers wearing protective gear moved door-to-door collecting chickens and eggs after paying owners 40 rupees (90 cents) for every bird as compensation. Eggs went free.

The birds had their necks twisted and were then stuffed in black plastic bags and buried in shallow pits. Disinfectants and lime powder were then sprinkled over the graves. ?We hope the culling will be over by tomorrow,?? Kumar said.

<B>Outbreak in Maharashtra </B>

Officials said they were checking if the latest outbreak ? which occurred in backyard poultry in Jalgaon district of Maharashtra ? was the deadly H5N1 strain that has killed about 100 people, most of them in Asia.

Health authorities said they were not taking any chances and had sent dozens of medical teams looking for people with flu-like symptoms to every household of the affected area.

Authorities said they had identified four villages spread over 1,100 square km (425 square miles) as affected and were killing all birds ? an estimated 70,000 ? within that area.

Jalgaon is 200 km (125 miles) from Navapur, where India reported its first case of the H5N1 strain last month. Authorities said last week they had contained the virus there after culling hundreds of thousands of chickens.

After the first outbreak, India tested more than 100 people for bird flu but all proved negative.

One health official said his department would cover 17 villages in Jalgaon checking for flu cases in humans.

Vijay Satbir Singh, Maharashtra?s top health official, said isolation wards had been kept ready in local hospitals should there be a need to quarantine people.

<B>The virus could mutate</B>

Authorities restricted movement of traffic through the four affected villages.

?We want as little contact as possible with these villages to preclude any possibility of the infection spreading,? Jalgaon?s administrative chief, Vijay Singhal, said.

Earlier, television showed dead chickens lying on a road in Jalgaon and children in the affected areas playing with domestic poultry.

The first outbreak cost the poultry industry more than $120 million in just two weeks. Roughly half India?s 1.1 billion people eat chicken.

The bird flu virus has spread rapidly since the beginning of February, moving deeper into Europe, Africa and Asia.

Scientists fear it is only a matter of time before the virus mutates into a form that passes easily among people, triggering a pandemic. Millions could die and economies would be crippled if that happens, they say.

<B>Krittivas MKHERJEE</B>