DHAKA: Three new farms reported bird flu outbreaks in Bangladesh on Sunday after thousands of poultry were destroyed last week due to confirmed cases of the deadly virus, the government said.

On Friday, authorities slaughtered more than 40,000 birds at six farms, a day after official confirmation of a bird flu outbreak on the outskirts of Dhaka. The outbreak was now suspected to have spread to farms in the north and central parts of the country, government spokesman Abdul Motalib said.

“Today we have detected bird flu in three more farms in the northern district of Jamalpur and destroyed some 9,000 birds there. We will now destroy all the birds within a one-kilometre area of the infected farms,” he said. “We also have reports of mass deaths of chickens in central Narayanganj and northern Dinajpur districts. We have sent the samples to laboratories for tests,” Motalib said.—AFP