Health workers today planned to complete a massive slaughter of chickens in western India aimed at containing an outbreak of the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus.

Wearing protective gloves and masks, health officials and farm workers slaughtered thousands of chickens in western India today, a day after the country reported its first outbreak of bird flu among poultry.

Lab tests have confirmed that at least some of the chickens that died of bird flu in western India in recent weeks were infected with the deadly H5N1 strain, the country’s first case of the disease.

China announced a new suspected SARS case today as authorities investigated the most recent outbreak in a bid to discover how it spread and whether lab procedures were to blame.

INDIA, which has the world’s second largest population, has recorded its first confirmed case of the deadly SARS virus, officials from the National Institute of Virology confirmed yesterday.